



Glass _ 

Book 

Copyright X" 

COl'YKIGIIT DEPOSIT. 




• N K. U RAVES AT SIXTY YEARS OF AGE. 



Compliments of the author. 



"5^fS^ *4iK> 75i««. -^.C- <*iC<» *^;«^ »^^» </'i^» </\S* </i^» </i^> -^.*h -^.O ^Ji^ ^^iC^ <?.*» ^Ji^^ *Vti* ^?t^ JBg 

71% 



THE FARMER BOY 

WHO = 

BECAME A BISHOP 



The Autobiography of 

The Right Reverend 

ANSON ROGERS GRAVES, 

S. T. D., LL. D. 



THE NEW WERNER COMPANY 

AKRON, OHIO 

1911 



7ft 
7J? 

m 

i 

?ft 

7ft 



i 

7ft 

is 

7ft 

fft 



7ft 



7K 

m 

1 

7lf 

IP 

IE 

IK 

'/ft 



k *9'lt*">»»«H SKS <riC ^VW*. ««Vi^» *?i^» «<*;c*. ''/IC* ">!£>• *^i-C^ •"S'.'f^ «-*l<f>» *?iv* «</K>» ^JrJ>. ^5-i-w>» -^J-C>» «^lf* ^ro. 






Copyright, 19 11 

By 
Anson R. Graves 



to. 

This book can be obtained at Bookstores at fifty 
cents per volume. If the book dealer does not 
have it and will not order same for you, The New 
Werner Company of Akron, Ohio, will supply 
same on receipt of price. 



©CIA292889 



rf 

V 






s * 






DEDICATION. 



I dedicate this book to all boys who 
want to make something of themselves. 



CONTENTS. 

Chapter. Page. 

I. Childhood .-. 5 

II. Frontier Life 9 

III. Childish Aspirations 15 

IV. Farm Life 25 

V. Political Aspirations 33 

VI. School Days in Rutland 38 

VII. Freshman Year in College 49 

VIII. Sophomore Year 56 

IX. Later College Career 67 

X. Teaching and Business 76 

XI. Seminary Life 83 

XII. Europe 87 

XIII. Germany 94 

XIV. Work in the West 100 

XV. Work in New England 104 

XVI. Gethsemane Church, Minneapolis 1 08 

XVII. Early Episcopate 114 

XVIII. 1891 121 

XIX. 1892 125 

XX. 1893 126 

XXI. 1894 130 

XXII. 1895 136 

XXIII. 1896 140 

XXIV. 1897 v 144 

XXV. 1898 147 

XXVI. 1899 150 

XXVII. 1900 -.- 154 

XXVIII. 1901 158 

XXIX. 1902 161 

XXX. 1903 164 

XXXI. 1904 168 

XXXII. 1905 171 

XXXIII. 1906 177 

XXXIV. 1907 187 

XXXV. 1908 191 

XXXVI. 1909 ..195 

XXXVII. 1910 200 



CHAPTER I. 

CHILDHOOD. 

AMONG the green hills of western Vermont, where 
the Pond Mountains almost overhang the beau- 
tiful Lake Austin, I was born on the 1 3th day of April, 
1 842. It was in the Town of Wells, Rutland County. 
We then lived by a small stream, the outlet of the 
lake, on which was a small flouring mill. In a room 
attached to this mill my father had a shop in which he 
manufactured hats, both the ordinary wool hats and 
the high beaver hats worn by many men on special 
occasions. 

My father, whose name was Daniel, was the son 
of Daniel Graves of Ira, Vermont, who kept the 
hotel, manufactured shoes, leather and potash, and 
represented the town in the legislature. He had come 
as a young married man from Old Hadley in the 
western part of Massachusetts. My great-grandfather 
was Deacon Nathan Graves, who was fifth in descent 
from Thomas Graves, formerly of Hartford, Con- 
necticut, and who came to this country from England 
about 1640. Deacon Nathan Graves, my great- 
grandfather, lived on Chestnut Mountain in Hadley, 
Massachusetts, and both he and his boys were con- 
sidered great hunters. As they lived at the time of 
the Revolutionary War, no doubt game was plenty 



6 The Farmer Boy 

in western Massachusetts. Perhaps it was from them 
that I inherited my great fondness for hunting wild 
game. Nathan Graves bore arms in the French and 
Indian War and also in the Revolutionary War. My 
grandfather, Daniel, was too young, but five of his 
older brothers fought in the Revolutionary War. The 
great-grandfather of this Nathan Graves, John Graves, 
and his brother were killed in King Philip's War. 
My mother was the daughter of Jedediah Rogers, 
who had moved from Norwich, Connecticut. He was 
fourth in descent from James Rogers of New Lon- 
don, Connecticut, who came from England about 
1635. My grandfather Rogers, when a child, saw 
the burning of New London by Benedict Arnold in 
the Revolutionary War. 

I was rather a feeble child the first two years and 
nervous, but gradually became strong and active like 
my brothers. One of my earliest recollections was 
attending a district school over Culver Hill when I 
was three or four years old with my older sisters and 
brother Orson. My brother drew a hand sled to 
school in the winter and on our way home we would 
all get on and coast down the Culver Hill for a quarter 
of a mile. There were two or three ridges across this 
road down the hill to turn the water into the side 
gutter. These we called M thank you ma'ams " and as 
the sled would strike these and take a jump we would 
all shout M Thank you ma'am." 

One time, when I was about four years old, while 



Who Became a Bishop 7 

coming up the other side of this hill with my father, we 
sat down by the road-side to rest. I remember asking 
my father how men when they cut down trees kept 
the trees from falling on them. He took a stick and 
stood it on end to illustrate and explained that when 
the tree began to fall it moved very slowly and the 
men could see which way it was going to fall and then 
ran around the other side. I was much with my father 
in those days, who seemed to enjoy answering all my 
questions and explaining things to me. He was a se- 
date, thoughtful and ingenious man, a friend and often 
a help to the school teachers in solving their more dif- 
ficult problems. In those days he invented a water- 
wheel on the principle of the turbine wheel, and put 
one into the flouring mill, but its power and velocity 
shook the mill so much that the owner became alarmed 
and had it taken out. That was about 1840, and 
before the turbine wheel was known or used in this 
country, as far as I can learn. 

During the Mexican War some one invented the 
way of making the high hats out of silk instead of 
beaver fur, and that ruined my father's business en- 
tirely. At the age of nearly fifty years, he found him- 
self with a family of six children without a business or 
profession. Some of my uncles had moved before 
this to the northern part of Illinois and taken up land 
from the government. My oldest brother, Henry, had 
already gone out to the lead mines at Galena, Illinois. 
The uncles encouraged my father to move west and go 



8 The Farmer Boy 

to farming. His brother, Mr. George Graves, gave 
some money to help move us out. 

This removal to the far west in 1847 was a land- 
mark in my life, for from that time on I remember 
everything that happened. Part of our household 
goods were sold and the rest carefully packed in large 
boxes. My mother cooked up a large quantity of food 
to last us on our journey. Several teams took us and 
our goods to Whitehall, New York, which was one 
terminus of the Erie Canal. While waiting for the 
boat there, my father took me up to the top of a steep 
hill to get a view of Lake Champlain and the country. 
On our way down, I fell and began to roll swiftly 
down the hill. Fortunately something brought me to a 
stop on the very brink of an overhanging cliff of rocks. 

Presently we entered the canal boat with one or two 
other families, where we lived for two weeks, while the 
boat was towed by horses through the State of New 
York to Buffalo. Somewhere along the line of the 
canal I saw the first locomotive. The first railroad in 
the state was just then being built. At one point in 
this journey, while the boat was being weighed, some- 
thing on shore attracted my attention and I was 
thoughtlessly walking off the boat into the canal when 
some gentleman caught me by my clothes and saved 
my life. Quite often we passed under bridges and 
some of these were not much higher than the deck of 
the boat. Then some one would cry out, " Low bridge 



Who Became a Bishop 9 

ahead," and we would all lie down on the deck of the 
boat till w r e passed under the bridge. 

At length we reached Buffalo, where we were trans- 
ferred to a large steamboat named the Empire State. 
We were four days passing through three great lakes 
to Chicago. On the steamer we could run about with 
great freedom and were very happy. Chicago, where 
we landed, was then a village of about live thousand 
people. We found some farmers who had been haul- 
ing wheat to Chicago to take us and our goods sixty 
miles to Marengo, Illinois, where my uncles lived. 
Before we got out of what is now Chicago the wagons 
stuck fast in the deep mud, so they had to double up 
the teams and pry the wheels up with rails taken from 
fences. 



CHAPTER II. 

FRONTIER LIFE. 

ON arriving at the end of our long journey of a 
thousand miles, which had taken us three weeks, 
we moved into a log house which had been deserted by 
one of the uncles. This was covered with shakes, a 
kind of long shingle split out of oak logs. These had 
warped and twisted badly, so the snow blew in and 
the rain came through. However, my mother, who was 
a good housekeeper, kept everything neat and reason- 



10 The Farmer Boy 

ably comfortable. Here we lived for two years, my 
father cultivating some land of my uncle's and other 
neighbors, giving one-third of the crop for rent. Some- 
times I rode horse for cultivating the corn, or attended 
school in a log school house about two miles away. 
While we were living here I had the measles and was 
so very ill that my life was despaired of. I can recall 
now some of the visions or dreams which I then had 
when delirious. As I became better, I remember fall- 
ing down in my efforts to walk and how later on I cried 
because I was too weak to run races with the boys. I 
must have been for the most part very happy in those 
days, for besides my two sisters a few years older and 
my brother Daniel, two years younger, I had plenty 
of cousins and little friends to play with. I recall that 
I was ambitious to excel them in running, jumping and 
wrestling, and generally did those of my age and size. 
I was rather small of my age, but very quick and active. 
We lived at the edge of Pleasant Grove with the prairie 
stretching away to the north of us. 

After two years, my father rented a farm on the 
prairie two miles to the north near another uncle. We 
moved there into another log house the spring that I 
was seven years old. I should fail of my duty if I did 
not speak of another who for thirteen years was a faith- 
ful if not a bosom friend of my brother Daniel and my- 
self. This was our dog, Watch. He was born in the 
family, so to speak, when I was six years old. He was 
a half-blooded pointer, but yellow as gold, large, strong 



Who Became a Bishop 1 1 

and brave ; a great hunter of all kinds of game. Prairie 
chickens, quails, ducks, wild geese, rabbits and rac- 
coons were plenty in those days, and some of these 
we hunted with Watch before we could carry a gun 
or shoot. During the wheat harvest of the summer 
when I was seven, while Dan and I were carrying to- 
gether the sheaves of wheat for shocking, we heard 
Watch bark and leap high above the standing grain. 
My older brothers, Henry and Orson, who were 
swinging the cradles with which they cut the grain, went 
to see what was the matter and found a large rattle- 
snake coiled up which had just bitten Watch on the end 
of the nose. We dug the root of a plant called snake- 
weed, pounded it and steeped it in milk. This we ap- 
plied to the wound and compelled the dog to swallow 
some of it. The end of his nose swelled up as large as 
the back part of his head and he was dreadfully sick 
for a week, but finally recovered entirely. 

Across the north end of the farm ran a good sized 
stream called the Kishwaukee. Muskrats, minks and 
coons were plenty along this creek. My grandfather 
Rogers, who lived with an uncle a mile away, had 
about a dozen traps and used to set them along this 
creek. He was fond of taking me along to the traps 
and would carry me on his back over the wet places. 
My excitement was always great as we drew near each 
trap to see whether anything was in it and whether 
it was dead or alive. Watch often went with us on 
these trips and when there was a coon in the trap, there 



12 The Farmer Boy 

followed a great fight between it and the dog. My 
grandfather taught me how to set the traps, bait them 
for the different animals, how to skin them and cure 
the skins. This was of great interest to me then and 
of use in later years. 

That winter my cousin, Henry Rogers, taught the 
district school in our neighborhood. One day a pupil 
came across a problem in the arithmetic which neither 
he nor the teacher could solve. Cousin Henry came to 
my father for help. That evening my father went as 
usual to the pasture to milk the cow. I followed along, 
but could get no response from my father to my chat- 
ter and many questions. He was " in a brown study." 
When we returned, he told my mother he had solved 
Henry's problem. Many years afterward, when home 
on a vacation from college, I asked my father about 
that problem. He told me what it was and how he 
solved it. To my great surprise, I found he had solved 
it by an algebraic process which he had invented for 
himself. He had never seen an algebra. In a similar 
way he had proved to his own satisfaction many of 
the theorems of geometry, inventing and studying his 
way along without a book. Every smooth board about 
the place was covered with geometric figures. 

At this time my two older brothers, being at home, 
did, with my father, all the work of the farm. My two 
sisters, Maria Jane, six years older, and Mary Adelia, 
four years older than myself, helped my mother in 
household duties. We never had, that I remember, a 



Who Became a Bishop 13 

servant in the house. When the mother was not well 
my sisters and all of us used to help with the house- 
work. I can hardly remember the time when I could 
not make warm bread or cakes for breakfast. We 
took a pride in doing those things for our mother, who 
was generally sewing on our clothes late into the night 
and consequently not up early in the morning. Ready- 
made clothing was not found in the stores in those days, 
and my mother, who could do most anything with her 
needle, made all the clothing for the family from 
stockings to the best coat. She even carded the wool 
and spun the yarn for the socks, and used to show us 
woolen sheets she had woven when younger. She was 
a great reader, and used to read aloud to us such stones 
as came in the weekly paper. 

Daniel and I went to school when there was school, 
about seven months of the year, turned the grindstone 
for sharpening the scythes, axes and other tools, ran on 
errands, and played the rest of the time. Circus and 
Indian war dances were our favorite plays in those 
days. 

I remember at this time that we four younger chil- 
dren said our prayers on going to bed and cannot re- 
member the time when we began. I suppose they were 
taught us by our mother, though neither she nor my 
father were ever members of any church. During the 
summer months there was often a Sunday school in 
the neighboring school house conducted by some Bap- 
tist or Presbyterian layman. I can remember commit- 



14 The Farmer Boy 

ting to memory some verses of Scripture at that time, 
but nothing more. Occasionally a rambling preacher 
gave us a sermon on Sunday afternoon. In religious 
matters we were left for the most part to ourselves and 
grew up like Topsy with little thought of such things. 
Still my parents were strictly moral and honest. No 
stimulants were used in the family and no tobacco by 
the children. I do not think any oath was consciously 
uttered by any member of the family. There was no 
serious quarrelling, but only slight jars and some com- 
plaining by the more ambitious ones. 

The singing school was a feature of our life then. 
An old man named Durgin with his fiddle conducted 
it for us children on Saturday afternoons and for the 
older ones in the evenings. He used to stay at our 
house a great deal, as my brother Henry took lessons 
of him on the violin. Mr. Durgin was a jolly old 
chap and a great delight to us children in our monot- 
onous farm life. We all learned his songs and ditties, 
though most of them are long since forgotten. 

The next spring, when I was eight years old, my 
father rented another farm about two miles away and 
much farther from the district school. Here was a 
log house and a stable made of poles covered with 
straw. Though small of my age, I began that spring 
to plow in the field alone. My father did not own any 
horses, but at that time he had a gentle yoke of oxen. 
One day, when plowing alone at the back of the farm, 
the clevis on the plow broke. There was a blacksmith 



Who Became a Bishop 15 

shop a quarter of a mile from the place where I was 
plowing and instead of going home I took the clevis to 
the shop and had it mended and then went on with the 
plowing. At noon my father asked me why I let the 
oxen rest so long at one time? I then told him of the 
broken clevis. He was very much surprised and 
pleased that I had gotten it mended and gone on with 
the work instead of coming home discouraged. 



CHAPTER III. 

CHILDISH ASPIRATIONS. 

A BOLT this time I recall the first dawnings of an 
-** unusual ambition. My father, when a lad of 
fourteen, had played a fife for a recruiting officer dur- 
ing the war with England in 1812 and had told me 
stories of the late war with Mexico. These filled me 
with a heroic spirit and I often called myself General 
Scott or General Taylor. My mother made me a little 
flag of stars and stnpes, and I would carry it around 
in the winter till my hands were nearly frozen. About 
this time I fought the only physical battles of my life. 
There was a boy about my age but somewhat larger 
who had said something insulting to a little girl I loved. 
Vv e soon came to blows, or more likely to scratching 
and pulling of hair, and fought desperately till he gave 



16 The Farmer Boy 

up and cried. Another neighbor's boy a year older 
and larger than I insulted and kicked me. A while 
after I pitched into him with might and main. Some 
time after that my mother was at his house, and calling 
Erastus to her, asked him how he had scratched his 
face and hurt his finger so badly. She then learned 
with indignation that her son, Anson, had made the 
scratches and bitten his finger. She reported it to my 
father who punished me in some way for whipping 
the big lubber. While we lived at this place, the first 
railroad west of Chicago was built across the back end 
of the farm. To watch the men dig the cuts, fill up the 
low places and lay the rails was a matter of great inter- 
est and wonderment to Daniel and me. We kept our 
father busy explaining every detail. In the fall when 
I was eight years old I uttered my first and last oath. 
My father was digging an out-door cellar, as there was 
none under the house. He was doing the work very 
nicely, as he always did, making the corners perfectly 
square and the sides straight and smooth. I expressed 
my admiration, emphasizing my words with the name 
of our Savior. My father was shocked and asked me 
if I did not know that was swearing? I answered truth- 
fully that I did not. There had been so little of it in 
our neighborhood that we had not been even taught 
about it. My father, though not a professing Christian, 
had a refined sense in regard to such things. He never 
told obscene stories and we did not venture to do it in 
his presence. 



Who Became a Bishop 1 7 

For a mile around us the farms were all fenced in 
and cultivated, but a mile or more to the east there were 
vast stretches of uncultivated prairie. Here all the 
cattle of the neighborhood roamed and fed during the 
summer. After school was out at four o'clock the 
boys of the neighborhood went in a group with Watch, 
our dog, to fetch home the cows. We usually had to 
cross the south branch of the Kishwaukee River. It 
was a small stream in the summer with occasional deep 
holes. In these holes, for every one of which we had 
a name, the boys used to swim. My mother was a 
nervous, anxious woman, so Dan and I were forbidden 
to go in swimming, for fear we might drown. The 
temptation was often too great for us, and there was 
frequent disobedience, followed by fear of punish- 
ment. When questioned about it, we told the truth 
and took our whipping. The whippings were not very 
severe, but somehow we dreaded them next to death. 
Notwithstanding all these, we eventually learned to 
swim and dive. Some of the most delightful hours of 
my childhood were spent in the water. 

I remember with great affection some of our teachers. 
One was a spinster, Lydia Andrews, whom I almost 
revered. Another was my cousin, Lucinda Rogers, 
who was young, beautiful and lovely. She took much 
pride in my ability to work out simple problems in my 
head without slate or blackboard. May God bless 
them all. One of our teachers, Mr. Frank Warren, 
seemed to us rather severe. He was also a carpenter 



18 The Farmer Boy 

and had planed out a heavy pine ruler which some of 
the older boys had felt on the palms of their hands. 
Some neighboring boys and myself formed a conspiracy 
to destroy the ruler. One night we went nearly two 
miles to the school house, crawled in through a broken 
window pane, eight inches by ten, picked the lock of 
his desk and got the ruler. Half a mile from the school 
house we cut it to pieces and threw the remnant into a 
field. Mr. Warren was a good teacher, however, and 
we learned " to toe the mark " under him. I was not 
a bad boy in school, but was often careless and thought- 
less. I was never severely punished, though sometimes 
made to stand on the floor for half an hour for some 
improper conduct. 

In the autumn of 1852, when I was ten years old, I 
remember taking my first interest in politics. Dan and 
I raised a pole twenty feet high in our front yard with 
a flag on it bearing the names of Pierce and King who 
were running for president and vice-president. The 
next spring my father moved again from the rented 
place to a farm which had been bought by my oldest 
brother, Henry. This was on Loco Prairie, adjoin- 
ing the farm on which we had lived three years before. 
This farm was one-eighth of a mile wide and a mile 
long, running back across the Kishwaukee River and 
into the Big Woods, as they were called. A mile still 
north of this was a wood lot of thirty or forty acres be- 
longing to the same farm. On this farm we lived in a 
log cabin for several years. I look back to it more than 



Who Became a Bishop 19 

to any one place as the home of my childhood. The 
Big Woods across the river were not fenced in and 
formed a free range for our cows and those of the 
neighbors who lived on the prairie. It was the duty of 
Dan, Watch and myself to start about an hour before 
sunset for the Big Woods to bring home the cows. 
We had the faculty of turning all our work into play. 
Thus, if we had to weed the carrots or hoe the potatoes, 
we took the job in our imaginations at so many dollars 
a row and in this way became very wealthy. We 
transformed ourselves into western rangers. Dan be- 
came Jack Rover and I was Sam Roger. Our legs 
were the finest Arabian horses on which we galloped 
and ran races and chased the buffaloes. The cows and 
oxen were the buffaloes. A day of twenty-four hours 
was a year. From 3 A. M. to 9 A. M. was spring, from 
9 A, M. to 3 P. M. was summer, from 3 P. M. to 9 P. M. 
was autumn and from 9 P. M. to 3 A. M. was the dead 
of winter. Each autumn we went on a great buffalo 
hunt which was really going after the cows. We 
crossed the Missouri River (the Kishwaukee Creek), 
then the great plains (the bottom land beyond) and 
penetrated the Rocky Mountains (the hills and 
openings of the Big Woods). Like David of 
old, we had slings of our own make, and a bag 
of pebbles at our side. The number of cows we hit 
w r ith the pebbles were the buffaloes we slew each 
autumn and we often surpassed the feats of Buffalo 
BilL It wis not always easy to find the cows, and it 



20 The Farmer Boy 

was often after da& before we arrived home. We 
knew every cow-path in the woods for a mile or more, 
and being the bold rangers that we were, we were never 
afraid. My mother, however, used sometimes to be- 
come very anxious, especially when the river was in 
flood, so we had to cross in a boat. 

My older brothers with Dan and myself had formed 
a boat company, each taking shares which were a 
dollar apiece. With this we bought the lumber, nails 
and pitch, and Henry and Orson built a very plain 
scow. To this w r e gave the name of the Kishwaukee 
Schooner. We had great times navigating the river 
and its branches. We often used the boat in fishing 
with a net, which also belonged to a stock company. 
Sometimes strange hunters would come along, take our 
boat and run it two or three miles down the river and 
leave it there. Then we made up exploring parties 
and hunted the stream through brush and swamps to 
find it. Generally we had to bring it back in a wagon. 
There used to be plenty of fish called bull-heads in 
the deeper holes of the river. These we caught at 
night in the following manner. We would dig a 
large number of angle worms and string these on a 
strong linen thread a yard long. Then we would fold 
the string up to about three inches in length. Around 
the middle of this bunch we would tie a strong cord and 
four inches from the worms tie the cord to a long stick. 
Anchoring our boat in a place where the water was six 
or eight feet deep, we would let the stick down to the 



Who Became a Biskop 21 

bottom and then raise it three or four inches. The 
bull-heads would bite into the bunch of worms and 
their hooked teeth become entangled in the threads. 
Feeling the stick wiggle, we would raise it quickly to 
the surface, hold the bob, as we called it, over the boat, 
and the fish would soon drop off. One night we caught 
a hundred in about an hour. Hot water dashed over 
these would cause the skins to slcugh off and my mother, 
who was an excellent cook, would prepare them as a 
feast for breakfast. 

This leads me to speak of our plain living and pov- 
erty. During these years, it was only with the greatest 
labor and economy that we were able to feed and clothe 
the family. The older brothers taught singing school 
each winter and with these earnings made payments on 
the farms they had bought. Henry played the violin 
and Orson the accordion and melodion, so they could 
lead their singing school with instrumental music as 
well as with their voices. The rough work of the farm 
made their fingers rather stiff for playing, so a couple 
of months in the autumn before they started their 
schools, they would practice each evening at home. 
The neighbors would sometimes gather around to hear 
the practice. 

From our earliest years we were taught to save our 
pennies and small earnings. I do not remember ever 
buying a stick of candy with my own money. Our 
mother was our banker and kept carefully our savings 
in a special purse in a special chest. When we had 



22 The Farmer Boy 

thus gathered enough, Dan and I would go in com- 
pany and buy a calf and let it run with the other cattle. 
It was only the penny earnings for little jobs that were 
our own. When we worked out regularly for the 
neighbors the earnings went to buy our clothing or to 
pay the family debts. With our small earnings and 
investments I had saved up thirty-four dollars by the 
time I was eighteen years old. For us that was a large 
amount of money, and this sum enabled me later to 
pay my fare to Vermont and start my school life with 
seven dollars in my pocket. 

During these years we always went barefoot in the 
summer and until quite late in the fall, so that one pair 
of boots would last us through the winter. In the lat- 
ter part of October, when the nights were frosty, our 
feet and ankles used. to become blue with cold when 
going for the cows in the evening. Although we still 
kept and worked oxen, my older brothers had horses, 
so we sometimes went for the cows on horseback and 
became expert bareback riders. We often rode the 
oxen, too, or one of the cows when bringing them 
home. 

When I was about thirteen, a man came through 
our part of the country teaching geography by singing. 
The countries, rivers, lakes, etc., were set to chants or 
familiar tunes. Either he or one of the pupils would 
point out on a large map the names as they came in 
the song. He had an evening class in each of the 
country school houses for miles around. At the end of 



Who Became a Bishop 23 

the winter he brought them all together for a final ex- 
hibition. It is one of the triumphs of my life that on 
this occasion he had me start the tunes, point the places 
and lead the exercises as his most accomplished pupil. 
In a similar way each country school district had its 
weekly spelling school in the evening and occasionally 
a tournament, or spelling match, between two districts. 
I was fortunate enough to spell the school down part 
of the time, but often some bright girl would spell me 
down. I have often wished in late years that I could 
spell as well as I could when I was eighteen. We also 
had debating societies at the school house on winter 
evenings. I must have been about twelve years old 
when I first took part in these. When I was fourteen, 
I made my first and last political speech. It was when 
Buchanan and Fremont were candidates for president. 
I had read an article in a book called ' The Great 
West," on the Missouri Compromise. My oldest 
brother was a staunch democrat and persuaded me to 
deliver a speech on the Missouri Compromise, giving it 
a democratic bias. The family assembled in the parlor 
of his new house, and I delivered my address. I only 
remember that I was very much dissatisfied with myself, 
and never attempted it again. 

Our favorite sport in the winter was snow-ball fights 
and building of snow forts. Our school house was on 
the prairie and the wind drove the snow into great drifts 
along the fences. Our forts were sometimes dug into 
the snow drifts and sometimes we cut large blocks of 



24 The Farmer Boy 

crusted snow with wooden saws and built them high* 
and again we would wall in a corner of the rail fence. 
All the boys who came from the north and west were 
combined against the boys who came from the south 
and east of the school. Sometimes we fought so furi- 
ously and in dead earnest that the teacher had to' inter- 
fere. Another fine game was * I spy," played on 
moonlight evenings around the great straw stacks. We 
would lean a large stick against the stack and one 
would blind and count a certain number while the 
others ran away and hid. Then he would find the boys, 
calling out, M I spy John James and touch the goal be- 
fore him." If one could get to the goal before him, 
he threw it down, and all who had been found before 
him could run out and hide again. The cattle, in feed- 
ing, dug deep holes in the straw stacks, which made 
fine places for hiding. The bright moon, the crisp, 
frosty air and the keen rivalry all combined to enhance 
the joy of the game. Sometimes we had husking-bees 
on winter evenings, when both the boys and girls came. 
These generally ended up with a feast on pop corn and 
pumpkin pie. The older and braver boys would see 
the girls home from these gatherings and from the 
spelling schools. At the age of twelve I was deep in 
love with the brightest and to me the prettiest girl in 
the school. She was just my age and was earnestly 
religious. Her name was Betsey Ann Gardner and my 
love was as pure and chivalric as love can be. It was 
for her that I fought my first real fight as related above. 



Who Became a Bishop 25 

In the summer time the boys far and near came to- 
gether, when possible, on Saturday evening for a great 
swim in the Kishwaukee River. There were some deep 
holes on my brother's farm, which made fine places for 
swimming. My forte was to swim the farthest with 
the fewest strokes and to beat the others in ducking 
each other in deep water. One time I held my big 
brother Orson under water till he strangled and I 
feared he would drown. We also had great contests 
in splashing water on each other till one gave up. 



CHAPTER IV. 

FARM LIFE. 

A LL these years we had to work hard on the 
^* farm eight months of the year, going to school in 
the winter as soon as the corn was husked. We usually 
had chapped hands and cold fingers before the fall 
work was done. My last work of the kind was gather- 
ing up small piles of husked corn from the ground out 
of the snow with my bare hands. I early became quite 
an expert in dropping corn for planting. I had to drop 
the corn in hills, four kernels at a time from a tin pail 
hung by a string from my neck. I was able to drop a 
row of corn with each hand as fast as two men could 
cover it behind me. That was an unusual accomplish- 



26 The Farmer Boy 

ment. I was always small of my age, but very quick 
and nimble. Another kind of work in which I had 
special skill was stacking hay and grain. My father, 
who was thoughtful and scientific in his work, had 
taught me to keep the stack full and hard in the center, 
and I acquired such skill in it that the rain never wet 
into my stacks. The neighbors used to exchange work 
with us in order to have me do their stacking. At fif- 
teen I could bind grain after the reaper as fast as the 
men and earn a man's wages. I could rake and bind 
and keep up with a cradler, which was considered a 
difficult task. 

These little triumphs fanned the ambition of a heart 
naturally aspiring and proud. I was not contented 
with my lot as a farmer boy, and longed for an educa- 
tion. It was in these days that I formed the definite 
ambition to become a statesman — a United States sen- 
ator. I remember coming in from plowing one day, 
my eyes red and my face covered with dust and white 
streaks down my cheeks. My mother asked me what 
I had been crying about. I told her it was because I 
could not get an education and become a great man. 
Still, for the most part, I was brave and confident that 
the opportunity would come. With this ambition, I 
became almost a miser in saving money for the time 
when I could go away to school. 

An incident occurred one spring which was not so 
creditable to my intelligence. Dan and I were sent to 
cut down willows in the meadow. The long, dry 



Who Became a Bishop 27 

grass among the willows was bothersome, and we 
thought it would be a good scheme to burn it out. We 
lighted the grass, but the first we knew it had spread 
into the meadow and was beyond our control. I ran 
frightened and crying to my father, who was plowing 
in a neighboring field. He came in haste and fought 
the fire, but it was not subdued until it had burned 
over many acres in our own and neighbor's meadow 
and some of the fence between. Our father did not 
punish us, but explained how by back-firing along a 
road in the neighbor's meadow he stopped the fire. We 
learned more than one lesson that day. 

Dan and I began to hunt with a real gun the spring 
that I was ten years old. There was an old, single- 
barrel shot gun in the family, the barrel of which was 
four feet long. It was so long and heavy that I could 
not hold it out or shoot without a rest. One of the 
older brothers, probably Orson, showed us how to load 
it. We started out, Dan carrying the front end and 
I the butt. We soon spied a small bird, but there was 
nothing to rest the gun on. Dan offered his shoulder, 
but that was too high. He then bent over and I rested 
the gun across his back and fired away. The butt of 
the gun hit my shoulder pretty hard, but the shot hit 
nothing. We reloaded and I was putting on the per- 
cussion cap, the butt of the gun against my stomach and 
the distant muzzle on the ground. In letting down the 
hammer, my thumb slipped and off went the gun, 
blowing a hole in the ground near where Dan stood. 



28 The Farmer JSop 

We looked at each other in surprise and fear. We re- 
covered and went on our way, arriving safely at home. 
From that time we frequently went hunting and often 
brought in wild ducks and other game. Later on we 
used to hunt coons at night in the fall of the year. 
Two cousins, Virto and Charles Rogers, used often to 
30 with us. When the October moon was full, we 
would start about ten o'clock with our old dog, Watch. 
There were some cornfields between the Big Woods 
and the river. We knew that the coons would stop 
in these on jheir way from the woods to the river. The 
dog would take the fresh tracks of the coon and gen- 
erally overtake the coon before he could reach a tree. 
Then followed a furious fight, which sometimes lasted 
twenty minutes. Whenever the dog made a dash, the 
coon would rise on its hind feet like a bear, open its 
fore paws to scratch and its mouth to bite, emitting at 
the same time a gruff noise between a growl and the 
spitting of a cat. We could do little to help the dog, 
but the excitement was intense until the coon was over- 
come. We rarely failed to bring one or two home. 
One night, while crossing the river, the dog got some- 
thing up a tree which we supposed was a coon. Two 
of the party went back to the house for a gun while 
the other two and the dog watched by the tree. When 
they returned, Virto took the gun, and getting the ob- 
ject between him and the moon, took the best aim he 
could and fired. Down came something end over end 
which Virto declared was a bear. It proved to be a 



Who Became a Bishop 29 

bob-cat, or lynx, which weighed twenty-eight pounds. 
Fortunately the fine shot struck it between the eyes and 
it fell dead, otherwise it might have given us serious 
trouble. 

Our father had explained to us what banks and 
banking were, probably in answer to some question 
about paper money. Thereupon Dan and I each 
started a pin bank, using pins for specie. With these 
we redeemed the five, ten and fifty pin bills which our 
banks issued. With us, and to some extent with our 
older brothers, these pin bills became the currency for 
all minor transactions. Our parents so far humored 
us in this that mother enabled us to get the pins and 
father made a nice wooden bank vault for Dan. His 
was called the Putnam Bank and mine the Seneca 
Bank. To some extent, our paper money became cur- 
rent among our schoolmates and pin lotteries were 
sometimes drawn. 

The fourth of July was the great day of the year 
with us. We rarely went to town to celebrate it, but 
devised our own amusements in the country. For 
months we saved our pennies and invested the money 
in gun-powder. We had a little cannon made of a 
piece of old gun barrel, with a wooden plug in one end. 
We would build forts out of chips and sticks and then 
set up other sticks behind the fort for soldiers. Plant- 
ing our cannon in front, we would load it with gravel 
stones which we called grape-shot and batter down the 
fort and soldiers. One fourth of July we joined with 



30 The Farmer Boy 

some neighboring boys and went to an old, deserted 
brick-yard in the woods two miles away. We hitched 
up our old dog, Watch, in a harness and cart we had 
made for him, put our dinner, fire-crackers and little 
cannon in the cart and away we went. In the brick- 
yard were some pools of water. On these we launched 
chips for men of war, then sunk them with our cannon 
from a fort on the shore. While we had very little 
money to spend on amusements, we managed by our 
ingenuity to have a better time than most other boys 
who had more money. 

In the spring of the year, Dan and I had to leave 
the school early in March to " get up " stove wood for 
the summer. Our wood lot was two miles north of our 
home and across the river. Taking our axes and our 
dinners we would start in the early morning and plod 
through snow and mud to our work. At noon we 
would build a little fire, thaw out our dinner and eat 
it with a relish known only to a hard-worked, growing 
boy. One day we resolved to chop up a certain tree 
before quitting work, which took us until after sunset. 
We then started for home, but it soon became dark. 
The river was in flood and had overflown the bottom 
land so we had to cross in a boat. On the farther bank 
we were surprised to meet our father, who had come 
to look for us. Our mother had become greatly 
alarmed and felt sure we were drowned in the flood. 

When I was about seventeen, Dan and I conceived 
the idea of earning some money by trapping. About 



Who Became a Bishop 31 

a dozen old steel traps had been left by my grand- 
father Rogers to brother Henry and we had the use of 
them. The days were getting short in the fall and the 
work on the farm was pressing. But by rising an hour 
earlier in the morning Dan could do all the chores al- 
lotted to us both and I could visit the traps before 
breakfast. I fear the first setting of the traps, selecting 
the places and changing them were attended to on 
Sundays. We had planned for this enterprise some 
months ahead and built a canoe suited to go rapidly 
up and down the stream. We had found near the river 
two long, narrow pine planks, which had floated down 
from some bridge above in the floods. These we 
dowelled together with wooden pins and fastened with 
cross cleats. We then hewed off the edges to a point 
at both ends. We bought three long clapboards, or 
siding, which were then made half an inch thick and 
six inches wide. Two of these we nailed to the edges 
of the plank bottom. As the planks were two inches 
thick, the boat would thus be only four inches deep 
inside — so shallow that it would surely dip water when 
the canoe tipped, or rocked. By ripping the third piece 
of siding lengthwise and riveting these to the upper 
edges of the low sides, we increased the depth of the 
boat nearly three inches. We then made a long pad- 
dle with a blade at each end for propelling it as we 
had read the Esquimaux did. The heavy bottom kept 
the canoe quite steady and it ran swiftly through the 
water. I managed to get to the first trap in the morning 



32 The Farmer Boy 

as soon as it was light enough to see, going rapidly 
from the upper trap down stream one morning, leave 
the canoe there and the next morning going from the 
lower trap up the stream. While the others were 
taking their M nooning," that is, the customary hour's 
rest at dinner time, Dan and I skinned our catch and 
stretched the skins on boards to dry. That fall we 
caught eighty muskrats, three minks and a coon. The 
muskrat skins brought us twelve and a half cents each 
and the other skins more. 

We all inherited from our parent's mechanical inge- 
nuity so we could make our own carts, boats and other 
playthings. We made cross-bows which would shoot 
so accurately that we used them after the manner of 
William Tell to shoot small, round squashes, the size 
of an apple, from each other's heads. We also made 
large squirt-guns which we played were fire engines 
with which we extinguished small fires we lighted for 
the purpose. 

We had almost no religious privileges. The nearest 
church was three miles away which was rather far to 
walk after working hard in the fields all the week. Oc- 
casionally some roving preacher, or circuit rider, would 
preach in our school house and such services we usually 
attended. In the winter and spring of 1857, when I 
was fifteen, a remarkable revival of religion swept over 
all the western states. Excited meetings were held in 
all the churches every night for three months. Every- 
body seemed to attend and thousands were converted. 



Who Became a Bishop 33 

My two older sisters, Dan and I went when we could 
have the team or ride with the neighbors. We all be- 
came " converted," or " experienced religion," as it was 
called in the Methodist Church. My sisters joined the 
church, but Dan and I were so young that our father 
bid us wait. I remember how earnest and happy I 
was for a while and how, after the meetings were over 
and the hard work on the farm came on, the interest 
died away, and the prayer meetings became duller and 
duller. We said our prayers and tried to be pious, but 
were never looked after by the minister or class-leader. 
After a year or two, Spiritualist lecturers came along 
preaching infidelity and I am sorry to say I became a 
downright atheist, or as nearly so as one so young and 
ignorant could be. I remained in that condition spir- 
itually for about three years and in my conceit could 
confound the simple religious people with the arguments 
which the Spiritualists had drawn from Tom Paine 
and others. 



CHAPTER V. 

POLITICAL ASPIRATIONS. 

F N the autumn of 1 860 came the memorable presi- 
* dential election when Lincoln, Douglas and 
Breckenridge were candidates. Companies of a semi- 
military character, called Wide-Awakes, were formed 



34 The Farmer Boy 

by the Republicans and we had never known such po- 
litical excitement. Our own family was divided. My 
father had always been a Democrat, but bolted from 
that party when the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was passed 
by Congress. Brother Orson also was a Republican, 
but Henry and myself were still Democrats. I had 
heard Stephen A. Douglas speak two years before and 
was enthusiastic for the Little Giant, as he was called. 
I remember shedding tears when the news came that 
Lincoln was elected. Four years later, during the 
Civil War, I cast my first vote for Lincoln's reelection. 
But great events and changes had come to the country 
and myself. While in college, my studies in political 
economy led me to believe in a protective tariff as the 
best policy for a young country like ours with manu- 
factories only partially developed. Though largely 
an independent in politics all my life, I have generally 
voted the Republican ticket at national elections. 

I spoke above of my military spirit and aspirations 
when I was eight years old. As years of peace passed 
by and I never saw a soldier or a uniform to feed my 
aspirations in that direction and as I began to read 
political newspapers and the proceedings of Congress, 
my ambition took a turn toward a political life. The 
brilliant and unprecedented career of Stephen A. 
Douglas, senator from our state, captivated my imagi- 
nation. I was never so wild as to dream of being 
president of the United States, but thought possibly I 
might become a senator and make speeches in Congress. 



Who Became a Bishop 35 

These aspirations fired my energy and led me on until 
after I graduated from college. With that career in 
view, I took great interest in declamation and oratory 
and took an active part in all debating societies. I 
afterwards organized one in high school and an extra 
one in college. As most statesmen were also lawyers, 
I planned to make that profession a stepping stone to 
greater things. 

The school in our country district was sometimes 
fairly good, but quite as often miserably poor, accord- 
ing to the teacher we happened to have. From the 
time I was ten years old I had to stay out of school 
summers to work on the farm. I attended the winter 
school about three and a half months each year. One 
winter w r hen about sixteen I walked three miles to 
an academy at Marengo, taught by the Presbyterian 
minister. I made good progress that winter. By the 
time I reached my eighteenth birthday, April, 1860, I 
had learned to read, write and spell, and had a fairly 
good knowledge of geography and arithmetic. I had 
tried to learn something of algebra from our last 
teacher, who knew little or nothing about it. 

The summer of 1 860 was my last one on the farm. 
Three years before that my Uncle George Graves and 
his wife, from Rutland, Vermont, had visited us. My 
father had told him how anxious I was to get an educa- 
tion and had probably commended my natural ability. 
At all events he offered if I would come to them to let 
me live in their family and attend the fine school at 



36 The Farmer Boy 

Rutland for a year. His son, Cousin Charles Graves, 
had previously promised that when I was ready I 
might study law in his office. The two offers seemed 
to open the way for me to realize the great dream of 
my life. My father told my uncle that he could not 
spare me yet, as there were debts contracted some 
years before which had not been paid, but that when 
they were cleared off I might go. In that hope I lived 
and toiled on for the next three years. My brother 
Daniel entered into my hopes and aspirations most 
heartily. We planned and toiled and saved together 
to pay those debts and hardly a day passed that we 
did not talk of the coming day of freedom. We paid 
off one of the debts due to a store-keeper by cutting 
broom-corn for him at seventy-five cents a day. We 
had to walk three miles to the work and be there at 
seven o'clock, carrying a cold lunch for dinner and 
walking home after sunset. A month or more of this 
work paid that debt. We estimated that the crop of 
the third year, 1860, when sold would pay the re- 
maining debts, so we began to make plans and prepara- 
tions for my long-looked-for departure from home. It 
was late in December before the corn was all gathered 
in. My mother was busy making me a new suit of 
clothes. I sold my interest in a cow and some young 
stock to my brother and sister and got together about 
thirty-four dollars from my many years' savings. This 
was in bills on western banks, called wild-cat banks. 
The bills would be taken for my railroad ticket, but 



Who Became a Bishop 37 

would not pass current in the east. I had to pay fif- 
teen per cent exchange for the seven dollars in silver 
which I would have left after paying for my ticket. 
Those seven dollars bought my books and all other 
necessaries until the next summer vacation, when I 
was able to earn something more. 

Some home-made socks and a few other things were 
packed in a small, oil-cloth satchel with lunch to last 
two or three days. On the last day of the year the 
horse was hitched to the home-made pung, or sleigh, 
and Brother Dan drove me to the station. It nearly 
broke my heart to say good-bye to the dear ones at 
home whom I had never left for any length of time 
before. Both Dan and I wept all the way to the sta- 
tion. The man who sold me my ticket asked if I were 
sick, remarking that I looked very pale. No doubt my 
eyes were very red. The train soon came along and 
the last tie was broken. A thousand miles were soon 
between me and my home. It was three and a half 
years before I saw any of my own family again. 

On the train which bore me from home I sat beside 
an intelligent man whose observations were interesting 
to me. He told me that I had always lived on a farm. I 
asked him how he knew that? He answered that he 
knew it from the shape of my hand — that my fingers 
were thick and strong. He called my attention to a 
young man in a seat ahead of us who was reading a 
book and bid me observe how slim and tapering his 
fingers were. He said that such fingers were very good 



38 The Farmer Boy 

for thumbing a dictionary, but were of little use for 
such work as I had been doing. 

I arrived in Chicago about noon and as my train for 
the east did not leave until toward evening, I left my 
satchel under a seat in the station and wandered about 
the great city. I had learned so much about it from 
the neighbors who had been there that I was not much 
surprised at what I saw. On the train I remember re- 
maining awake most of the night to see all I could of the 
country through which we passed. It was mostly cov- 
ered with snow, but I recall the great apple orchards 
of Michigan. The second night I slept in my seat. 
There were no sleeping cars in those days and I should 
not have spent my money for a berth if there had been. 
It was many years after that before I could afford the 
luxury of a sleeping car. In the forenoon of the third 
day we entered the mountains of Vermont. My heart 
swelled within me as I saw the great, snow-clad hills 
rising up on either side. I had not seen a mountain 
before since my earliest childhood, but I soon grew to 
admire and love them 



CHAPTER VI. 

SCHOOL DAYS IN RUTLAND. 

A /[ Y Uncle George and Cousin Charles happened 
* * * to be at the station when I arrived and took me 
at once to their home. I was given a nice room to 



Who Became a Bishop 39 

myself and had around me luxuries of which I had 
never dreamt. I entered the public high school after 
what was to me a tedious and difficult examination. I 
think I must have been taken in as a special favor, for 
I do not believe I answered correctly half the questions, 
so rusty was I in my studies and so bewildered by my 
new surroundings. My Uncle had a horse and cow 
whose care was committed to me, and I had the wood 
to bring in from the woodshed. I gathered up all the 
tools scattered about the place and had a special place 
for each. My Uncle soon discovered this and was 
mightily pleased. 

My Uncle's family consisted of a wife, three sons 
and two daughters. The sons were married and had 
homes of their own. The two daughters, Emily and 
Lucy, were at home. Emily was several years older 
than myself and Lucy was a year younger. Both were 
highly educated. They were very helpful to me in my 
studies, correcting my ungrammatical expressions and 
were lovely to me in every way. My aunt was a mod- 
est, retiring woman of much natural refinement. All 
were earnest communicants of the Episcopal Church 
and every morning they had family prayers. As my 
western roughness and rural habits wore off, I fitted in 
perfectly to the family and came to love them all. I 
believe in turn I was loved by them as the nearest 
of kin. It became equally dear to me as my western 
home and I often returned to it in later years with the 
greatest joy. 



40 The Farmer Boy 

I settled down to my studies with great zeal and 
was soon at the head of most of my classes, but that 
did not satisfy me. I was far behind others of my age. 
From my cousins and the older boys in school I learned 
about a college career and became fired with the de- 
she to go through college. To prepare for college re- 
quired in the regular course four years of Latin, two 
of Greek and one of algebra, and I knew practically 
nothing of any of them. Four more years in school 
from the next fall and four years in college seemed to 
me then an endless period and I could not bear the 
thought of such delay. It was now at the beginning of 
the spring term of school, and I was nineteen years old. 
I asked my Cousin Charles to help me in Latin, which 
he gladly did* I studied it nights and Saturdays and in 
one month I was reciting with the class which began 
it the fall before. As the end of the term drew near, 
the class in primary algebra was to review the whole 
book in three weeks, preparatory to examination. I 
begged the Principal to let me go through it with 
them. This was about the most difficult thing I ever 
undertook. Cousin Lucy kindly helped me. I studied 
nearly every night till midnight and went to bed weep- 
ing over my difficulties. I had to skip many of the 
examples for lack of time to solve them, but in some 
way I scratched through the examination at the end. 
The following extract from a letter written home at 
that time will show the struggle through which I 
passed : 



Who Became a Bishop 41 

44 Rutland, Vt., June 9th, 1861. 
44 Beloved Friends: 

1 When I wrote you last I was about to begin alge- 
bra with high hopes of going through it this term, but 
I have found it, as I said then, more easily said than 
done. We have had five recitations in it. With the 
first four I got along very well, but the last lesson on 
Friday I did not have. I studied all day yesterday on 
it except about two hours. During one of these I hoed 
in the garden and got my Latin lesson while so doing. 
In the other hour I rode out horse-back, but did not 
enjoy my ride for thinking of my algebra. I studied it 
in the evening, didn't get through with Friday's lesson, 
cried over it nearly two hours, went to bed half-past 
eleven, got up this morning at five, studied till 3 P. M., 
not going to church this forenoon, and got two-thirds 
of my lesson for to-morrow. The reason I am so anx- 
ious to get through it now is that I want to finish pre- 
paratory mathematics this term in order to attain the end 
I am now striving for. If the teacher we had at home 
a year ago could have taught algebra as she said she 
could, I should not now have all this trouble. 

4 I have not gone to the war, as it seems you ex- 
pected from what I wrote, but I thought it would be 
well enough to know how you felt on the subject in case 
a favorable chance might offer. I must now bid you 
good-bye for a little while to take exercise, without 
which I should not be able to stand it long." 

On entering the school I was told that each boy had 
to speak a piece once in three weeks and write a com- 
position once in three weeks, but those who wrote their 
own declamations and spoke them need not write com- 



42 The Farmer Boy 

positions. I told the teacher that I would write my 
declamations. My first one was a very tame compo- 
sition on the Missouri Compromise. The principal ad- 
vised me to read it as a composition, but I begged him 
to let me speak it and I would try to do better next 
time. After that I seemed to get into the oratorical 
style and improved rapidly. Later on one of the boys 
who was about to graduate delivered an oration to 
prove that barbarism was a stronger and happier condi- 
tion than civilization. I asked permission to answer 
him in my next oration and did so to the apparent 
amusement and satisfaction of all. 

During these months the great Civil War was com- 
ing on and both my declamations and letters home were 
full of the subject. I asked my parents' permission to 
enlist in the Northern army but this was refused. On 
the last day of school, the day before the Fourth of 
July, my declamation was in the form of verses and 
was full of the patriotic and heroic. I was honored by 
being placed next to the last on the programme. 

My teachers were Mr. D. G. Moore, principal, Miss 
Hudson and Miss Hodges. I soon came to like them 
very much, and I think now from the way they over- 
looked my faults and helped me on that they must have 
liked me. Some years later, Mr. Moore married Miss 
Hudson and became a prominent man in Illinois. Miss 
Hodges was married to Mr. Everett P. Wheeler, a 
leading lawyer and Churchman of New York City. 
Not knowing this latter fact, about eight years after- 



Who Became a Bishop 43 

ward I was calling on Mr. Wheeler for a subscription 
toward the endowment of the Diocese of Albany. He 
invited me into his house to entertain me for the night. 
Great was my surprise and joy to find that my hostess 
was my old teacher. 

During the summer vacation, I worked to earn 
money for clothes and books. I first hoed the gardens 
for my Uncle and Cousin Charles. I then made the 
hay in Uncle's meadow of seven acres and put it in the 
barn. The rest of the vacation I worked in his boot 
factory. 

When I left home, I weighed one hundred and sev- 
enteen pounds, was well knit and strong. During the 
six months of school and hard study I lost five pounds, 
but regained it and more during the summer, so that 
I weighed one hundred and twenty-two pounds. I 
wrote home at this time as follows : 

1 I do not think I am delicate, for I eat more than 
any other person at the table and am the strongest boy 
in school except the soldier. It is my practice to take 
plenty of food, sleep and exercise, bathe twice a 
week and, most important of all, sleep with my win- 
dows open, summer or winter, so that I breathe the pure 
air which is enough to make most any person healthy." 

Owing to the hard times caused by the war, it had 
been doubtful about the school reopening, but the 
teachers accepted reduced salaries and the school 
went on August 20th. If the school had not re- 
opened, I had decided to enlist in Berdan's Sharp 



44 The Farmer Boy 

Shooters and go to the war. The previous term I 
had earned five dollars by sweeping and dusting the 
school-room, bringing in the wood and ringing the bell. 
I undertook the same again. My principal studies 
were Latin reader, Caesar and Greek. My time was 
divided into regular hours, which were systematically 
observed. I rose every morning at five o'clock, studied 
until seven, did the chores at home and school until 
nine, after school until six I swept the school-room and 
studied. After supper until bed time I did the even- 
ing chores and took gymnastic exercises. On the hori- 
zontal bar I could draw myself up to my chin twenty- 
seven times in immediate succession. I was usually in 
bed by nine o'clock. 

The older girls and boys of the school formed a 
reading circle to which I belonged and the boys or- 
ganized a debating society. Among my schoolmates 
and boon companions were the following : Edward L. 
Temple, who afterwards became the treasurer of a 
savings bank and the author of several books. He 
married my Cousin Lucy Graves; Wilbur Atwater, 
who left that fall for college and afterwards became 
professor of chemistry in Wesleyan University and one 
of the leading chemists of the country; Eugene Kelley, 
who enlisted in Berdan's Sharp Shooters and died in 
the war; his brother, Edwin D. Kelley, a fine linguist, 
who graduated at the University of Michigan and be- 
came a Baptist missionary in Burmah. He partly 
translated the Bible into Burmese and was drowned 



Who Became a Bishop 45 

in Burmah; Charles Mead, the finest speaker in our 
school, who was shot in battle. There were several 
girls who led their classes and all became noble women. 
First among them in beauty and accomplishments was 
my Cousin Lucy. In a letter home at that time she 
is described in the following couplet: 

1 Whose eyes I never meet without a smile, 
Whose heart is full of kindness all the while." 

She exerted the greatest influence on my life to 
refine and ennoble it; a debt I never paid except in 
admiration and love. Many years afterwards, I had 
the satisfaction of having her on my arm when I was 
honored as bishop in the White House at Washington. 

In October, 1861, six weeks after school opened, 
under the advice of the principal, Mr. Moore, and 
Cousin Charles, I gave up for the time the difficult 
undertaking of fitting for college by the next autumn. 
Mr. Moore thought I then might teach for the winter 
and earn some money which I very much needed. At 
that time I wrote home that I had not had a cent of 
money for six weeks. My Uncle objected strongly to 
my teaching, as he needed me to do the chores, so I 
eventually gave that up and stayed in school. The 
chores at that time were to cut wood for three stoves, 
take care of a horse, drive a mile to the pasture and 
milk a cow and take care of the school building. One 
Saturday I gathered fourteen bushels of carrots, nine 
bushels of turnips, three bushels of beets, one bushel of 



46 The Farmer Boy 

parsnips, half a bushel of salsify and put them all in 
the cellar. Having settled down to the regular school 
course, things went on smoothly to the end of the school 
year. In the spring vacation I was unable to get work 
to earn money, so I went into my Uncle's boot factory 
and made myself a pair of shoes which lasted me a 
year. 

The following letter to my mother gives a picture 
of my life as it then was : 

"Rutland, Vt., May 18th, 1862. 
" My dear Mother: 

' I think yesterday was one of the happiest days 
of my life. There was nothing in particular to make 
it so, but it was one of those days when there seems to 
be a smile on everybody's face and all nature seemed 
to twinkle with gladness. I worked in the garden all 
day, leisurely and perhaps lazily, but my mind ever 
busy with its own happy thoughts. I thought of you all 
and in my mind voluntarily went back pver the happier 
events of my life. 

' I quit work at six o'clock, washed and changed 
my clothes for Sunday. After tea I went two miles 
south of the village after a trunk. It was at the house 
of Mr. Horace Dyer, a rich bachelor farmer, where 
lives my classmate, George Ellis. He invited me into 
the library where we had a splendid chat, recounting 
the past events of our lives and our future hopes. 

1 In the evening a son of Rev. Dr. Hicks, of Bur- 
lington, came to stay over night with me. He told of 
the exploits, trials and sports of the college boys until 
my mind, always overflowing with boyish hope, sped on 
to the time when I, too, should be a college student. 



Who Became a Bishop 47 

' Friday evening our debating society met as usual, 
but as there was not a quorum that night, some one pro- 
posed to hear a stump speech from Graves on the war. 
I happened to have General Hunter's proclamation in 
my pocket which none of them had read, so I con- 
sented. They stepped out and got a couple of girls to 
help make a respectable audience, when I - went in 
extempore ' and fairly surprised myself. 

1 I wrote a piece on Chivalry to speak last Wednes- 
day and gave it to Mr. Moore to correct. When he 
returned it, the passages I thought the most eloquent 
were struck out. I concluded not to speak it thus 
mutilated, so I learned and rehearsed, to his great sur- 
prise, a selected piece, which, by the way, is the first 
one not original I have spoken since I have been here. 

1 I have been to church twice to-day, read 1 88 pages 
in the life of Alexander the Great and walked two 
miles for exercise. I received my report Wednesday 
and found my standing lower than ever, but I am con- 
scious that I have done as well as possible under the 
circumstances. I enjoy the best of health and am 
strong and hearty. I hope to hear from you all before 
another week rolls around and in the meantime I 
remain, 

" Your affectionate son, 

M Anson." 

At the close of the school year, I passed the ex- 
aminations without difficulty and spoke an original piece 
on swearing. I was honored by being placed last on 
the programme. I had been looking in every direc- 
tion for work during the summer, but could find none. 
In desperation I wrote to President Jackson of Hobart 



48 The Farmer Boy 

College, told him what preparation I had, that I could 
read two and perhaps four books of Vergil during the 
summer, and asked him if he thought I could enter 
Hobart and keep a good standing in my class. His 
answer was favorable. Three days after school closed 
I began Vergil, studying nine hours a day. The first 
day I learned the rules of prosody, scanned and trans- 
lated thirteen lines and recited to Cousin Emily. The 
next day I got forty lines and soon settled down to 
one hundred lines a day. By the end of July I was 
well into the third book, but became utterly tired out. 
I could not sleep at night for thinking of my lessons and 
realized that I must stop studying. As I had only nine- 
teen dollars in money, I also realized that I must earn 
something before going to college. I almost compelled 
my Uncle to give me work in his boot factory, though 
he could offer me only eight cents an hour. By rising 
at four o'clock, doing the chores and eating a bread 
and milk breakfast, I was able to get to the shop at 
six o'clock. In this way I worked eleven hours a day 
and earned eighty-eight cents. 

At this time war meetings were frequently held to 
incite men to volunteer in the army. Three hundred 
men were required from the town of Rutland and only 
one hundred could be induced to enlist. My patriotic 
soul was stirred with indignation at such a condition. 
Again I asked my parents' permission to enlist and 
urged it with the best arguments I could. They posi- 
tively refused. As they and my brother Daniel had 



Who Became a Bishop 49 

sacrificed a great deal in letting me go off to school be- 
fore I was of age, I felt I must yield to their wishes. 
My parents were aged, and for the first time in their life 
had secured a home of their own. My brother Daniel 
was working very hard to meet the payments. Had I 
enlisted, the one hundred dollar bounty was to go to- 
ward paying for their home, and twenty dollars a 
month, which Vermont soldiers received, was to be 
saved up to help me through college. The forbidding 
prospects of my being able to work my way through 
college with so little money in sight may have had 
something to do with my desire to enlist. After paying 
my fare to the college at Geneva, New York, and buy- 
ing a few necessaries, I had only twenty-eight dollars 
with no one in the world to help me to the value of a 
cent. Nevertheless, I bravely bid farewell to my sec- 
ond home, not without many tears, and took the train 
for my college town. 



CHAPTER VII. 

FRESHMAN YEAR IN COLLEGE. 

/'"" > VN arriving in Geneva, New York, I was greatly 
^-^ impressed with the beauty of the place. The 
college buildings overlooked Seneca Lake, and there 
were many beautiful homes with terraced gardens on 



50 The Farmer Boy 

the lake shore between the college and the business 
part of the town. The view stretched away across the 
lake to the hills, open fields and verdant groves beyond. 

Rev. Dr. Metcalf, professor of Latin, examined me 
in Latin and Greek, and very kindly let me through 
with my many deficiencies. I also passed in mathe- 
matics. I later found that I had the poorest prepara- 
tion of any in our class except one boy, and he was con- 
ditioned and left college at the end of the first term. 
It took the very hardest study for me to keep up with 
my class, but I passed all my examinations at the end 
of the term and was duly matriculated. 

Dr. Metcalf helped me to find a cheap boarding- 
house where I could get a room for seventy-five cents 
a week and meals for two dollars a week. This, he 
said, was the best I could do. After buying the neces- 
sary books, I had then left only $19. I boarded with 
a Mrs. Reed, whose husband had gone to the war. I 
soon arranged with her to get dinners only at twelve 
cents a meal. Breakfast and supper consisted of crack- 
ers and sweet apples at a cost of three cents a meal. 
Not long after that she let me work for my board. 
After a few weeks she moved away. In the meantime, 
a Mr. H. C. Schell heard that I was trying to work my 
way and kindly invited me to live in his family until I 
found a place to work for my board. He did not have 
much for me to do, but I taught his little girl and helped 
his son with his Latin and copied insurance reports in 



Who Became a Bishop 51 

his office. Thus matters went on until after the Christ- 
mas vacation. 

I had been looking everywhere to find a place where 
I could work for my board, but could find none. I 
could not reasonably stay longer with Mr. Schell, as 
he was not wealthy and had a large family to support. 
I had written out to my school friends, the Kelly boys, 
who were getting on finely in the University of Mich- 
igan. They thought I would have no trouble in work- 
ing my way out there, and their parents kindly offered 
to let me live with them until I found a place to work. 
Accordingly I made arrangements to leave Hobart and 
pay my way to Ann Arbor with the few dollars I had 
remaining. I secured an honorable letter of transfer 
from President Jackson, who seemed to regret my 
leaving. 

These preparations for a change hastened a crisis in 
my religious life. When I went to live at my Uncle 
George's, two years before, I was a downright disbe- 
liever in the Christian religion. While there, I had at- 
tended regularly the Episcopal Church with his family. 
The quiet devotion of the congregation, the solemn 
beauty of the service, the earnest preaching of Dr. 
Roger Howard, and the genuine Christian life in my 
Uncle's family, silently and unconsciously softened my 
heart and began to make me wish I could believe and 
be a Christian. Still I would not say the Creed in the 
Service and was still skeptical. When I came to 
college, I found that all our learned professors were 



52 The Farmer Boy 

devout Christians and I began to think that possibly 
Tom Paine had made a mistake, and that there might 
be, after all, some reasonable ground for accepting 
Christianity. Finally I went to our ablest professor, 
Dr. W. D. Wilson, and told him my difficulties. He 
talked to me in a kindly way and advised me to read 
Pearson on the Creed. As that proved everything 
from the Bible and I rejected the inspiration of the 
Scripture, it did not help me much. Still, as I read 
and pondered, it finally came to me that the Christian 
religion was not intended to be founded on reason in 
such a way as to compel one to accept it, but that in 
the final issue the will was the arbiter. That faith and 
an honest purpose to do God's will, without positive 
knowledge, was sufficient ground to act on. Accord- 
ingly I went to the college chaplain, Rev. Henry A. 
Neely, afterward bishop of Maine, and told him that 
I had not very much faith, but that I was willing to 
make an honest trial of the Christian religion; that I 
was not at all happy or contented with my infidelity, 
and that I was willing to try and see if the full Christian 
life would make me any happier; that I was going off 
to a strange college and if he thought me a proper 
subject for baptism I should like to be baptized the next 
day, Sunday. He said if I had faith as a grain of mus- 
tard seed, I ought not to crush it out, but let it grow, 
and that he would baptize me the next day. Mr. and 
Mrs. Schell stood as my witnesses and on January 1 I , 
1863, in Trinity Church, Geneva, I was baptized into 



Who Became a Bishop 53 

Christ. The first Sunday of the next month the Chap- 
lain preached a very earnest sermon on the duty and 
benefit of receiving the Lord's Supper. I thought if 
any one needed it, I did, and without waiting for Con- 
firmation or even permission, I went forward and re- 
ceived. I continued to do so until the next autumn, 
when Bishop De Lancey came and I was confirmed. I 
might say here that I have never since turned my back 
on the Lord's Supper whenever I was present at its 
celebration. I cannot say that my skeptical nature was 
obliterated, but I set my face against it and tried all the 
harder to live a holy life. From the moment I deter- 
mined what to do and was baptized the uneasiness of a 
skeptic's life left me and a quiet, holy joy reigned in 
my heart. 

A few days after my baptism I was passing a large 
Sanitarium, where I had been refused work a short 
time before. I was moved to try again. I was told 
that the young man who had been doing their odd jobs 
was going to leave and if I would sweep the Doctor's 
office, mix such medicines as he required and assist in 
giving the patients their physical exercises, I could have 
a room and my board. The same day Dr. Jackson said 
I could have the John Watts scholarship, which brought 
in seventy dollars a year. These unexpected promises 
settled the matter of my leaving Hobart. They made it 
possible for me to remain, which I greatly desired. 
They gave me time for my studies and a wholesome 
life free from anxiety. Putting the stronger patients 



54 The Farmer Boy 

through the required movements gave me the best of 
exercise, while the plain, wholesome food was best 
suited for a student's life. All things went smoothly 
and well for the four months I remained there, and in 
many ways were the pleasantest and most profitable 
days of my college life. 

As I did not seem to be needed for teaching in the 
Sunday school of Trinity Church, I took work in the 
so-called Bethel Sunday school, a union school in what 
might be called the slums of Geneva. The boys in my 
class were very rough, and I sometimes had to chase 
them in from the outside, or " round them up," as we 
would say in the west. 

Things went on smoothly the rest of the college year 
and I was steadily making my way up in my studies 
from the foot of the class. In May my kind friend, 
Mr. Schell, moved from the town a mile into the coun- 
try where he had several acres of land, a horse, a cow 
and a garden. He was very anxious to have me come 
and live with him. I was most comfortably fixed in the 
Sanitarium and did not wish to leave, but as Mr. Schell 
was badly crippled with rheumatism and had be- 
friended me in the day of my most urgent need, I went 
to live with him again and work for my board. Our 
friendship continued many years until his death. He 
lived long enough to see me a bishop and was very 
proud of my promotion. His letters always began with 
4 My dear God-son " and ended with " Your affec- 
tionate God-father." 



Who Became a Bishop 55 

During the first summer vacation I worked on a farm, 
harvesting and stacking grain, and when that work was 
over, I dug and piled stone on another farm at one 
dollar and twenty-five cents a day. Later I secured 
work of Mr. James O. Sheldon, a retired merchant, 
cutting the dead limbs out of the trees on his beautiful 
estate. While there, a Mrs. J. B. Varnum of New 
York City was visiting at Mr. Sheldon's home. One 
day he pointed me out to her in the top of a high elm 
tree sawing off limbs at the risk of my life. He told her 
that I was doing that to work my way through college. 
She immediately became interested, made many in- 
quiries of him, of Mr. Schell, and of the college presi- 
dent in regard to me. She returned to New York 
without my seeing her. When Mr. Sheldon paid me 
off, he handed me five dollars extra which he said was 
left me by Mrs. Varnum. I wrote her a letter of 
thanks. From that time till her death she remained 
my steadfast friend, occasionally sending me small 
sums of money as she heard indirectly or surmised that 
I needed it. 

Near the end of this vacation a regiment of cavalry 
was mustered in at Camp Swift, a short distance from 
where I lived. I used to go over and talk to the boys 
till my former war fever returned upon me. This was 
inflamed by patriotic letters from my friend, Charles B. 
Mead, who was then at the front in almost daily battles. 
I again wrote home most earnestly for permission to 
enlist. My parents and my brother, who had sacrificed 



56 The Farmer Boy 

much that I might get an education, wrote me very 
strongly against it and I realized the justice of the plea. 
It was well for me that I did, for soon after the regi- 
ment reached Virginia it was cut to pieces in an am- 
buscade and half of them killed or wounded. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

SOPHOMORE YEAR. 

r\N the 29th of the next October, 1863, Bishop 
^-^ Delancey, then very old and feeble, visited the 
college chapel for confirmation. I stood at the chancel 
rail between two classmates, Asa G. Wells and Charles 
S. Knapp. They both were preparing for the ministry 
and I was to be a lawyer and politician. During the 
following winter both were sick with diphtheria and I 
helped to nurse them. Knapp recovered, though he 
was never very strong afterwards and died after being 
about twelve or fifteen years in the ministry. Wells, 
whom I loved dearly, became apparently some better 
so I was able to take him to the home of a cousin in 
Cazenovia, New York. Two or three days later the 
news of his death came to us and cast a gloom over all 
in college. Knapp was my room-mate in college for a 
year or more. 

During the autumn of 1863 there came to the class 




ANSON R. GRAVES AT TWENTY-ONE YEARS OF AGE. 



Who Became a Bishop 57 

below ours a boy by the name of Philip Potter. From 
some cause he and I formed a most eager and romantic 
friendship. He, too, was to study for the ministry, 
but his eyes failed him, so he had to leave college and 
give up his life hopes. The friendship, however, has 
lasted through fifty years, and we are bosom friends 
to-day. 

Potter had brought with him a little photograph of 
a girl in his aunt's school at Brattleboro, Vermont, by 
the name of Bessie Thornton. I conceived a wonder- 
ful liking for the girlish face and begged the photo- 
graph from him. I carried it in my pocketbook for 
years and cherished it as embodying the ideal of all 
that is lovely in woman. Some of my earliest verses 
were inscribed to her. The following is a sample : 

To Bessie Thornton. 

Some bring the painful love to light 

That buried long has been, 
Some sing fresh love, but I will write 

Of her I have not seen. 

They tell me that her eyes are gray, 

Her locks of silken brown, 
Her movement graceful, light and gay, 

As nymphs of old renown. 

As ruby's tints illume the gold 
That holds the gem in place, 

E'en so, they say, her beaming soul 
Lights up her radiant face. 



58 The Farmer Boy 

E'en if she should in trifles fail, 

It does not dim her sheen, 
Since fancy throws its silken veil 

O'er her I have not seen. 

Though, maiden, we may never meet 

Except by Fancy's art, 
In love-lit day dreams, pure and sweet, 

The Eden of the heart; 

Yet in those dear, enchanted isles, 
Those bowers of shining green, 

May I not share the looks and smiles 
Of her I have not seen? 

And may I add this little prayer 

To her, my fancy's queen, 
Of thought she'll grant a tiny share 

To him she has not seen? 

Eight years later, when in Vevey, Switzerland, I 
wrote the following of Bessie: 



Bessie's Photograph. 
Vevey, Switzerland, Oct. 10, 1871 

The sun is bright on Alpine peaks, 
Geneva's waves are glancing fair, 

While vintage songs of Switzer maids 
Come trembling through the autumn air. 

Their songs fall dull upon mine ear, 
Nor wins my sight this charming place, 



Who Became a Bishop 59 

My eyes instead are bending o'er 
The portrait of a girlish face. 

Although those lips ne'er spoke my name, 

That little hand was ne'er in mine, 
Though never in those eyes I've glanced, 

I hold her yet as half divine. 

And years have passed since it was so, 
Long years of toil and change and care, 

Yet oft my lips this picture press, 
Oft lisp her name in secret prayer. 

But why it is I cannot tell, 

Yet something whispers to my heart 

That kindred spirits were not made 
To be forever thus apart. 

'Tis true we may not meet on earth, 

But in the world which is to be, 
Methinks I'll know those wondrous eyes, 

And she, perhaps, will smile on me. 

'Tis strangely sweet to think and dream 
Of that bright home and those we love. 

That lives here sundered yet may flow 
In one commingled stream above. 

Then fare-thee-well, my spirit's love 
Till then remain fair, sweet and free, 

And angels keep my wayward heart 
From loving one less pure than thee. 



60 The Farmer Boy 

A year later, when toiling alone on the plains of 
Nebraska, I wrote the following of her: 

To Bessie. 

Crete, Nebraska, Aug. 14, 1872. 
Night comes, and resting on my lonely couch, 

I think of what I've been and ought to be, 
Then think of Heaven, of mansions, angels there, 

Then vanish into dreams with thoughts of thee. 

When daylight, stealing on the realms of sleep, 
Unclasps its bars and sets my senses free, 

The chain that lets me down to earth again 
Are linked, lingering dreams I've had of thee. 

I am sorry to have to close this delicate romance by 
saying that I never have seen Bessie Thornton, and I 
do not suppose she ever heard of my existence. How- 
ever, in the long, lonely struggles of my early life, no 
doubt my thoughts and dreams of her helped to purify 
and ennoble my life. I still hope to meet her and know 
her in a better world. I might add as an associated 
fact of interest that there was then in that same town of 
Brattleboro another little girl who afterwards became 
my wife. 

Before I came to Hobart the secret, or Greek letter, 
societies had claimed and secured all the men of each 
class except two or three who were called neutrals. 
Some of these, though not all, were undesirable, and 
in consequence were, in a mild sense, ostracised. The 



Who Became a Bishop 61 

class officers, the speakers at public exhibitions and the 
desirable offices of the literary societies were monop- 
olized by the society men. When our class, the class 
of 1 866, entered Hobart it was one of the largest and 
perhaps the strongest class the college ever had. The 
societies got hold of a few of our men, but not the 
strongest or the best. A large majority of our class 
remained neutrals and clung together. In consequence 
the class was not cut up into small, jarring cliques. 
There was more class feeling and we generally won 
in all athletic contests with the other classes and some- 
times played against two of the other classes combined. 
The marks for our recitations showed an average well 
ahead of the other classes. When the Sophomores 
undertook to haze our men, we retaliated and hazed 
some of them. This soon brought hazing to an end 
for that year. The next year, when the freshmen en- 
tered, we neutrals made a successful effort to secure a 
fair share of the men as neutrals. This led to many 
an earnest meeting and discussion. In consequence two 
of the secret societies were reduced to two or three 
members apiece and the college honors, as far as they 
rested in the hands of the students, were more equitably 
divided. 

On the third day of November, I cast my first vote. 
It was for Abraham Lincoln, at his second election. 
All through my youth I had been an advocate of the 
Democratic party, but the splitting of that party by the 
Southerners, their secession from the Union and the 



62 The Farmer Boy 

conduct of many Northern Democrats during the war 
had changed my sympathies and interests. 

In December of each year came the Sophomore ex- 
hibition at which a selection from their number spoke 
declamations for prizes. After the exhibition we had 
a class supper at which many of the class spoke in 
response to toasts given out before. The toast " Par 
Oneri," which was our class motto, meaning M Equal 
to the Burden," had been given to me. When the 
toast-master called me up, I spoke as follows, which I 
give as also containing some class history : 

M Par Oneri." 

Our noble motto! 'tis to thee 
We drink and sing in highest glee, 
To thee who, born amid the strife 
And dangers of a freshman's life, 
'Twill ever make our hearts beat high 
To hear the words " Par Oneri." 

When we each other scarcely knew 
Some one proposed for motto you 
That equal to the burden we 
In peace and war would always be 
And on each other we'd rely 
To make ourselves " Par Oneri." 

Scarce thus decided when the doors 
Were fastened by three sophomores. 
We burst the doors and drove them out, 
Made their defeat a perfect rout, 



Who Became a Bishop 63 

So for their lives they had to fly, 
They found us all " Par Oneri." 

At length the Sophs grew mighty bold 
And on our classmate laid their hold, 
Indignant that he had to treat 
We swore the bloody Sophs to meet, 
And all their boasted power defy 
And prove ourselves " Par Oneri." 

One cold, dark night a Soph we seized 
And faced him to the chill lake breeze, 
To treat or drown his choice to take, 
(His fingers felt the icy lake), 
Poor Sophy answered with a sigh, 
" I guess you are 4 Par Oneri. 



» »» 



'Twas on the Campus at base ball 
We answered to the Sophomore's call, 
We fought them well till set of sun 
And whipped them out just two to one, 
Then loud the welkin rang and high 
When victory crowned " Par Oneri." 

At length we reached our Sophomore year 
And in our turn made Freshmen fear, 
Who walked the streets with broken pride 
And hugged at night the shady side, 
Then trembled at each noise or cry 
Lest they should hear " Par Oneri." 

One night a sorry Fresh we caught 
And to the colored district brought, 
Then tightly bound him to a tree 



64 The Farmer Boy 

And chuckled in our fiendish glee, 
Soon down the street he heard a cry, 
The devilish yell, " Par Oneri." 

Another Freshman lost his beard 
So much unto his heart endeared; 
Just for a burlesque on the lake 
We thought a bath he'd better take, 
The sudzing lake sent up a sigh 
Which sounded like " Par Oneri." 

But now vacation comes my boys 
Let ladies make up half your joys, 
And if some maid you try to woo 
As Sophomore's are apt to do, 
Upon your gallantry rely 
To show yourselves M Par Oneri.'* 

Then when our class ship moors at last 
And all her anchors safely cast, 
When we all from the old ship go 
Each one to paddle his canoe, 
We'll nail upon each masthead high 
The noble words " Par Oneri." 

In life's rough storm we'll never fear, 
But boldly through the dark shoals steer, 
And when upon life's latest wave 
Our bark seems tottering o'er the grave, 
We'll shout our motto till we die 
And prove ourselves " Par Oneri." 

The enthusiasm and cheers brought out by this re- 
cital of our class victories can be easily imagined. 



Who Became a Bishop 65 

At the end of 1 863 I find the following note in my 
diary: ' I am a Sophomore in Hobart, measure five 
feet five and one-half inches in height, weigh one hun- 
dred and thirty-five pounds and enjoy the best of 
health. I was obliged to spend nearly all my spare 
time the past year in earning my board. I have sev- 
enteen dollars and sixty-five cents with the best of 
prospects." 

I spent the Christmas vacation at my Uncle's in 
Rutland, Vermont, and those were very happy days. 
Cousins Emily and Lucy with myself were invited to all 
the parties and festivities. I both needed and enjoyed 
to the full the rest and recreation. On New Year's 
day with two old schoolmates we made twenty-two 
New Year's calls and attended a dance in the evening 
— the best in my life. 

After returning to college, I found that living a 
mile away, the care of a horse and cow, sawing and 
carrying all the wood used, care of a garden, orchard 
and meadow, took up so much of my time that I was 
hardly able to keep up with my class, and that I had 
no time whatever for side reading. I tried to get back 
to my old place at the Sanitarium, but that was filled 
by another. I then determined to board myself in my 
room at college. I kept this up during the rest of the 
college year. My fare was exceedingly simple. For a 
month it was one-half pint of milk and one-third of a 
loaf of bread for breakfast; for dinner beefsteak 
roasted on a stick before the fire in the stove and 



66 The Farmer Boy 

Boston crackers. Supper same as breakfast. A month 
or more later it was corn mush and potatoes for break- 
fast; dinner, potatoes and dried herring or dried hali- 
but ; supper, corn mush and a little molasses on the last 
plate full. Cost, five cents a day. Two months after 
that I wrote home that the last two weeks I had lived 
on corn mush one day and flour mush the next, with a 
little raw, salt pork. For weeks at a time I lived on 
thirty-three cents a week. In June I wrote home that 
I had eaten nothing for a month but corn meal mush 
and molasses. Lack of money was the chief cause of 
these economies, but another was a strong desire to visit 
my home the next summer, which I had not seen in 
over three years. At this time I had not the means in 
sight and I was saving every cent I could. I had picked 
up a kind of stenography from an old man who came 
about the college and presently I had a class of fellow- 
students learning it from me at $1.50 apiece. Not 
having to earn my board enabled me to do far better in 
my studies, so that I came near getting into the honor 
grade on my examinations. I even joined half a 
dozen classmates in reading a Greek tragedy outside 
the course which we recited once a week to our en- 
thusiastic Greek professor, Albert S. Wheeler. Be- 
sides this, I read much in Greek, Latin and English 
literature and Roman history outside the regular course. 
Still the close application to my studies and the very 
slim and monotonous diet began to affect my stomach 



Who Became a Bishop 67 

so that a physician told me that I must take more exer- 
cise and be more in the open air. 

On the 24th of June, President Jackson, who knew 
I was boarding myself and probably knew of my poor 
fare, came to me and said that he was satisfied that I 
would eventually study for the ministry and if I could 
so decide now, I could have a scholarship of $120 a 
year. With that he thought I could get on more com- 
fortably. I told him I thought it needed good men in 
the law and in politics as well as in the ministry. I 
could not yet give up the aspirations and ambition of 
my childhood. From that time, however, I could not 
altogether banish the idea of the ministry from my mind. 



CHAPTER IX. 

LATER COLLEGE CAREER. 

A T the end of my Sophomore year, July 15, 1864, 
^* I started for my longed-for visit home. I had 
been away three years and a half, and had half starved 
myself to save the money needed for the journey. On 
every Sunday during all those years I had never failed 
to write home. My people at home had sent me oc- 
casionally some postage stamps, but were not able to 
do more. My brother Daniel's labor was practically 
supporting a family of four and paying for their new 



68 The Farmer Boy 

home. On my way home I stopped two days at De- 
troit to visit with a college friend, P. B. Lightner, and 
at Ann Arbor with an old school friend, Edwin D. 
Kelley. I had a long talk with Kelley on religion 
which, he wrote me afterwards, resulted in his becom- 
ing a Christian. Some years after he died a mission- 
ary in Burmah. During the summer vacation I helped 
brother Daniel through his harvesting and stacking, 
then worked the rest of the time for brother Henry 
building a tobacco shed and gathering tobacco. Early 
in September I returned to college with a large box of 
food prepared by my mother and sister. 

During the Christmas vacation I stayed in my room 
at college with my classmate, Fred C. Rogers, read up 
on Thackeray and his works, and wrote an essay for 
the Cobb prize on Thackeray. Much of my spare 
time during the next term I spent in reading up on 
Milton's Paradise Lost and writing an essay on it for 
the White essay prize. I fill out the record of the rest 
of my Junior year with a few quotations from my 
diary : 

March 6th. I was treated to an oyster supper by 
Dr. Stebbins. My food for some weeks has been a 
sort of hard-tack made of flour wet up with water and 
a little lard and baked on the top of my stove with a 
basin turned over it for an oven. This food, I fear, is 
having an injurious effect on my health, and I must 
change my diet. I have just received thirty dollars 
from my scholarship. This sum has got to board and 



Who Became a Bishop 69 

clothe me, pay my college bills, buy books and every- 
thing else I have until the middle of July, over three 
months. 

March 8th. This is my mother's birthday. I have 
this morning resolved, God helping, 

1 . To improve my time better. 

2. To rise earlier and retire earlier. 

3. To take better care of my health by taking 
more exercise, and eating better food. 

4. To listen to no obscene talk. 

5. To be more devout in chapel. 

6. To pray in private twice instead of once a day. 
March 15th. Received a box of good eatables from 

a Mrs. S. S. Gould of Seneca Falls, whom I never 
saw, but who heard of my struggles from a friend. 

April 1st. Received a barrel of eatables from 
home, nearly one thousand miles away. 

April 13th. I am twenty-three years old to-day and 
came near not thinking of it. I am the oldest man in 
our class, but in feelings am as young as any. 

April 24th. Tried to get some writing or some other 
work to do this short vacation, but without success. 
There is nothing that so embitters my feelings as to be 
rejected by everybody when trying to get employment 
to keep from starving. 

July 8th. Went to Rochester to get a book agency 
to work by the month, but did not succeed, as their 
agents all work on commission. I would work on com- 
mission, but I had not a cent of money in the world 



70 The Farmer Bo\) 

to begin with. Think I shall try to borrow some money 
to start on, though it will be the first debt I have ever 
had. Three years ago my present circumstances would 
have given me the ' blues," but now I feel that it 
will all be right some way. 

July 1 2th. This has been a great day for me. My 
essay on " Paradise Lost " took the first White prize, 
a twenty-five dollar gold medal, and my essay on 
Thackeray took the first Cobb prize, a twenty dollar 
gold medal. As no other student has ever taken both 
these prizes (much less a junior away from seniors) , I 
received many congratulations. Both committees to 
decide praised my essays. 

On July 14th, I began canvassing for subscriptions 
for the " Life of Abraham Lincoln," written by J. G. 
Holland. I kept steadily at it for seven weeks, secur- 
ing two hundred and sixty-three subscriptions. My 
commission amounted to three hundred dollars, but I 
did not get the books to deliver until the next winter. I 
had to go partly on borrowed money until that time. 

About the tenth of September I was invited to Mr. 
Sheldon's house to meet for the first time my benefac- 
tress, Mrs. J. B. Varnum, with her husband and daugh- 
ter. After tea, Mr. and Mrs. Varnum came out to the 
gate with me, giving me much kindly advice and, on 
bidding me good-bye, Mrs. Varnum slipped fifty dollars 
into my hand. With thirty dollars of that I paid back 
the money I had borrowed. I then took table board 
at the Sanitarium, which they kindly gave me at two 






Who Became a Bishop 71 

dollars a week. From this time on I was able to live 
more comfortably. All went smoothly through the fall 
term and I easily passed the examinations. The Christ- 
mas vacation I spent in my room at college, while all 
the others went to their homes. The following from a 
letter to my sister pictures my life there : 

1 My college mates are all gone and I sit down in 
my room to contemplate the companions with whom I 
am to make Christmas merry. There is my English 
dictionary, a large and sedate looking fellow. By his 
side are Aristotle's Politics, Smith's Political Econ- 
omy, Locke's Essay on Civil Government, Gibbons' 
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hallam's 
Middle Ages, Motley's Dutch Republic, Hume's 
England and De Tocqueville's Democracy in Amer- 
ica. This, you will think, is a dismal picture, yet why 
should it be? Is it not a privilege to listen to and un- 
derstand the subtle reasoning of Aristotle, who has 
been a teacher of great men for two thousand years ; to 
follow Locke in his sublime theories of government? 
Can a man be alone with such companions? Or again 
to read and contemplate the histories of great nations 
until you become so familiar with them that whole 
nations seem to be your companions? On your right 
sits beautiful and refined Greece and on your left old 
Rome with her stern visage of war. Sitting with such 
companions, can you say that you are alone? These 
are noble thoughts, to be sure, but are they satisfying? 
These images are indeed companions of the intellect, 
but not of the heart. Step aside Greece, with all your 
learning and treachery, and give place to a loving sis- 
ter! Begone, stern Rome and let an honest brother 



72 The Farmer Boy 

take your place ! Let this great world, past and present, 
with which I was sitting a minute ago as a companion 
of nations be contracted into a home circle; let com- 
panions of the intellect be changed for companions of 
the heart, and I will show you where happiness 
dwells! " 

The books enumerated above I was studying as a 
foundation for the study of law and politics. At the 
end of my diary for 1865 I find a list of fifty-three 
works I read that year outside my regular college 
course; books on logic and rhetoric, political economy 
and general literature. It was a habit of mine after 
we had read a portion or sample of any classical work 
in the original then to read all the rest of that author's 
works in translations ; a thing I would advise any class- 
ical student to do. Otherwise one can get no adequate 
idea and benefit of classical literature. 

Toward the end of Christmas vacation the books I 
had taken subscriptions for in the summer began to 
arrive and I spent several weeks delivering them about 
the country in a sleigh. The weather was very cold, 
below zero much of the time, and I had no overcoat, so 
I suffered much with the cold. When I was through, 
however, I had money enough to pay the wholesale 
price of the books, pay up my debts and put one hun- 
dred dollars in the bank. 

It was the custom in Hobart College for the Senior 
class on Washington's birthday to give a public exhi- 
bition in the Opera House, which consisted of reading 



Who Became a Bishop 73 

Washington's farewell address, an original oration and 
a poem. I had been elected poet for the occasion 
and spent ten days and nights writing a poem of four- 
hundred and seventy-six lines. The subject was the 
Battle of Gettysburg and the close of the Civil War. 
It was received with much applause and many con- 
gratulations. 

Although much out of college during the winter de- 
livering books and on account of some illness, I man- 
aged to keep along in my studies and passed the final 
examinations. My standing was about seventh from 
the head of the class. My spare time on Sundays, 
after attending chapel twice during my Senior year, 
I spent in reading aloud to a blind man, Mr. Frank- 
lin, at the Sanitarium. After getting the money from 
the sale of the books, I began securing a patent for a 
stove invented by my father many years before and 
which had been used in our family at home for 
twenty-five years. In this I succeeded, though it 
took most of my spare money. During the last term 
of college as the studies were light, I studied very 
hard on the first book of Blackstone's " Commentaries 
on English Law." 

On March 13 and 14, 1866, I find the following 
entry in my diary: " O, how the bright and extrava- 
gant hopes of my boyhood come up before me as I 
contemplate my weakness, unable as I now see I am 
from lack of genius and opportunity to accomplish the 
great things to which my early ambition aspired — youth 



74 The Farmer Boy 

vanishing like a dream as one approaches the age of 
real work! O, that I had not such a boundless and 
burning ambition! I now set it down as my great 
aim in life, first to gain Heaven, and second to gain 
as much earthly fame as I can by doing the greatest 
possible good my abilities and opportunities will enable 
me to do to my fellow men. This fame, though not 
the loudest or most dazzling which I might perhaps 
acquire, will be of the best kind. It will not, it seems 
to me, contravene my first purpose in gaining Heaven. 
The particular means by which I now hope to gain 
these ends are by following the legal profession and 
perhaps engaging in politics. I am led to adopt this 
course by a careful study of my own tastes and powers 
and by the advice of those who best understand my 
natural and acquired abilities. I shall change it, how- 
ever, if circumstances seem to warrant it. If these 
plans are consistent with the infinitely wise purpose of 
God, I pray Him to assist me in following them and 
resisting the temptations which will necessarily arise 
in such a course. If good things result from my feeble 
efforts, His be all the glory thereof. But if all this 
seems not best to Him, may He give me strength and 
grace to bear my failures with Christian fortitude so 
that my spirit be not soured and distempered by dis- 
appointment." 

I think I can say without boasting that I have kept 
fairly well the second resolution. I can say truth- 
fully that I never sought preferment and never accepted 



Who Became a Bishop 75 

it unless I thought it opened a larger field for useful- 
ness. I never asked for my Master of Arts degree and 
did not receive it for fifteen years. I never sought a 
call to a parish or the episcopate. I never sought a 
university degree and did not receive my D.D. and 
L.L.D. until after I was elected bishop. It is doubtful 
if I deserved either of them. 

My commencement oration was on the subject of 
ambition under the title of ' Justice to Caesar," in 
which I poured out my soul in justifying a laudable 
ambition. I was not cheered as I came onto the stage, 
as many of my classmates were, for I had few ac- 
quaintances in the town. I ended my oration with these 
words : ' Despise not the powers which God has given 
us, but boldly use them for our own improvement and 
the good of our race. Choose in life that sphere of 
action in which our abilities enable us to excel and in 
it be ambitious to become the first and best. There let 
us toil on, determined while we live to stand foremost 
in the ranks of men, 

' And when we die to leave our name 
A light, a landmark, on the cliffs of fame.' 

When I closed I was surprised and nearly over- 
come by the deafening applause and the shower of 
bouquets which were thrown upon the stage. Some of 
our ablest professors left the audience and came be- 
hind the stage to congratulate me. 

The following from a letter to my sister expresses 
my feelings on leaving college and Geneva: "To- 



76 The Farmer JBop 

morrow I pack my trunk, soon to bid adieu to this 
fair town forever. I shall not look back upon it as a 
place where I have passed four years of unbroken 
happiness, but as a place where I have passed four 
years of faithful study, where I have endured some 
hardships, have had comparatively few pleasures ex- 
cept such as come from the satisfaction of duty per- 
formed, have achieved some successes, have made few 
friendships, but those of the truest and deepest kind. 
Though I drop a tear on leaving Geneva, yet my feel- 
ings for the most part are those rather of gratitude than 
regret. Grateful I am that a kind Providence has 
given me health, friends, pecuniary aid, energy and 
perseverance to accomplish my purpose here, the pros- 
pect of achieving which has at times seemed so dubious ; 
grateful that I have not wasted my time in foolish 
sports, or in frivolous society. I have chiefly to regret 
that in my efforts to lead a true Christian life and be 
an example to my schoolmates, I have often fallen far 
short of the standard. I believe, however, my failures 
in this respect have generally resulted from ignorance, 
not vice." 



CHAPTER X. 

TEACHING AND BUSINESS. 

O EFORE graduating I had engaged to become 
*~* principal of the Ury House School for Boys 
near Philadelphia for five hundred dollars a year with 



Who Became a Bishop 11 

board and keep. The summer vacation I spent with 
an aged aunt at Fairfax, Vermont, studying Kent's 
" Commentary on American Law." I studied eight 
hours a day, taking fifty pages in advance and fifty 
pages in review each day and making a written 
abstract or analysis of the review. 

Early in September I went to teach the school near 
Philadelphia, visiting my uncle's family in Rutland, 
Vermont, on the way. I found the school was kept in 
an old family mansion near the post office of Fox Chase 
about nine miles north of Philadelphia. A long avenue 
of large pine trees led from the house to the country 
road and all the surroundings along the Pennypacker 
Creek were picturesque and beautiful. There were 
about thirty boys in the school. The older ones, many 
of whom were preparing for college, were under my 
care. Mrs. Crawford, the owner of the school, was 
a middle aged widow, whose husband had lost his 
property in New Orleans during the Civil War. This 
beautiful country home of one hundred acres was in 
her name and all she had left except six sons, whom 
she had to educate. She began her school on their 
account and took in other boys until it developed into 
Ury House School. She was a refined English lady 
and the boys in the school were from the best families 
in and around Philadelphia. I had a most delightful 
year and saved nearly all my wages. Out of school 
hours I was a boy with the boys and joined in all their 
sports. 



78 The Farmer Bo)) 

In October the patent on my father's stove was 
issued, the securing of which had cost me about a 
hundred dollars. During the year I was planning how 
I could get up patterns to show to the manufacturers. 
My father was aged and in poor health, so he could 
not attend to that part of the undertaking. 

On the fourth of November I find the following 
entry in my diary : ' I find that the great desire of my 
early youth, political fame, is fast vanishing away — 
not because I fear I could not attain eminence in that 
field, for I think I could if I devoted my entire energies 
to it. Somehow I care not for the things I once longed 
for, nor has their place been filled by new objects of 
desire. My enthusiasm for the practice of law has 
declined with the desire for political distinction. It is 
still my highest wish to do the greatest possible good 
to my fellow men and to work out my own salvation. 
Why not, then, study for the ministry? I can hardly 
tell why, but sometimes it seems as though my work 
is to be a peculiar one. I diligently improve the present 
in gaining general knowledge and leaving the future to 
God, believing that He will guide me by circumstances 
into the path I am to pursue and will give me strength 
as I need in my journey through it. With this prayer 
in my heart I work, watch and wait." At this time I 
was reading an hour each day in Blackstone and an 
hour in general literature besides teaching the school. 

4 February 9, 1 867. Am not very happy these days 
— deep thoughts and misgivings about the future." 



Who Became a Bishop 79 

' March 24. While in church to-day I thought 
more seriously about studying for the ministry than ever 
before." 

" April 1 9. Finished the third and fourth volumes 
of Kent's ' Commentaries on American Law.' 

1 May 25. I have been devoting all my spare time 
lately to Spanish and finished to-day * Ollendorff 
Method.' Shall begin translating ' Don Quixote ' next 
week. To-day Mrs. Crawford offered to raise my 
salary another three hundred dollars if I would stay 
by the school another year." 

On the twenty -first of June the school closed for the 
year and I received fine presents both from Mrs. Craw- 
ford and the boys of the school. On the whole, the 
year was a happy and profitable one to me. Besides 
finishing the study of Blackstone and Kent in law, and 
becoming well grounded in the Spanish language, I 
read about forty works of general literature. I spent 
many evenings socially with the refined people of the 
neighborhood. 

Immediately after the close of the school I started 
for my home in Illinois. I spent the next three months 
in getting up patterns for the stove my father and I 
had patented and making the first stove for exhibition. 
To do this I walked three miles and a half each morn- 
ing to the shop, worked all day with the patternmaker 
and walked home at night. About the first of October 
I took the stove to Chicago, Albany, Troy and Phila- 
delphia, exhibiting it to the large manufacturers. All 



80 The Farmer Boy 

were pleased with the working excellencies and unique 
principles, but objected to its round form as being 
likely to injure its sale. I made a new drawing to im- 
prove the appearance, but as a new set of patterns 
would cost about five hundred dollars and the money 
I had saved teaching was about gone, I had to give up 
for the present the stove enterprise. It was now the 
middle of January and I was obliged to do something 
to replenish my treasury. For this purpose I under- 
took selljng rubber stamps, a new thing then. I trav- 
eled all over eastern Pennsylvania and in four months 
cleared six hundred dollars above expenses. I had the 
asthma badly at first, which left me with a cough which 
I feared would run into consumption. I finally recov- 
ered, though it left a weak spot in my right lung. In 
the latter part of May I again visited the stove manu- 
facturers in Philadelphia, showing them a new model I 
had made, but they all discouraged me, saying that I 
could not go on without a large capital. I could see 
now that all my efforts to introduce the stove would be 
a failure unless I devoted ten or a dozen years of my 
life to it and I did not care enough for a fortune, how- 
ever large, to do that. The time had come when I 
must return to the study of law or recast my life plans. 
All one night in my boarding house in Philadelphia I 
walked the floor and after many tears over the dying 
hopes of my youth, decided to look toward the ministry 
of the Church. Still, to satisfy my father and leave 
no stone unturned toward making the stove a success, I 



Who Became a Bishop 81 

revisited Albany, Troy and Chicago, showing my new 
model. I received no encouragement unless I would 
devote my own time and ingenuity to bringing the stove 
to perfection in outward appearance. As that might 
take years and deprive me of any other career, I would 
not do it. Besides, my father, who was old and feeble, 
was not likely to live long enough to reap any advantage 
from it when it should succeed. I returned home with 
a heavy heart to report to my father the failure after 
a year of earnest effort. The time had not been alto- 
gether lost as I had learned much of the world and 
business methods. 

The following letter to Mrs. Varnum explains the 
change in my life plans: 

M Marengo, III., Aug. 31, 1868. 
" My dear Mrs. Varnum: 

' At the time I wrote you last I was engaged in 
selling a rubber hand press. I worked at that business 
four months, saving one hundred dollars more than I 
earned in the previous year teaching. I then renewed 
my previous efforts to introduce the stove, In that I 
succeeded indifferently. I have had some offers w T hich 
others have considered good, but they were such as 
would oblige me to make the stove business my voca- 
tion in life. That I would not do, if I were sure of 
making a fortune at it. I was unable to sell it as you 
proposed in your letter. In order to put it in a shape 
to sell the entire right I should have to spend two or 
three years more on it and considerable capital. By 
that time it would probably be too late to do my parents 
any good, judging from their present state of health. 



82 The Farmer Bop 

It became, therefore, a mere personal question with my- 
self, and I was unable to see in wealth a sufficient re- 
ward for a life of such toil. Hence, I have decided 
to drop the stove and choose a profession more suited 
to my tastes and desires — one whose reward, if I prove 
an acceptable worker, will be not of the earth earthy, 
but of life eternal. 

' I have for some time looked upon the Christian 
ministry as the only great work in which one could 
engage with a conscience void of all offence and with 
the feeling that every hour of toil was spent in his great 
Master's vineyard. I know that I am all unworthy 
of such a glorious work, but I trust that my Saviour will 
give me strength and a right spirit to prosecute it suc- 
cessfully and acceptably. 

1 I hardly know how you, who have ever taken so 
kindly an interest in my welfare, will look upon my 
decision, but you were too far away to consult. Judg- 
ing, however, from the general nature of your advice 
and admonitions, both oral and written, I hardly think 
you will disapprove. 

6 I leave here the last of this week to make my 
friends in Rutland, Vermont, a visit and thence pro- 
ceed to the General Theological Seminary in New 
York City. I hope to enter a year in advance, so it will 
take but two years before I can be ordained deacon. 
I have been working this summer on the studies they 
pursue the first year and shall have to study very hard 
alljhe fall. 

The health of my parents, as I intimated above, is 
very poor indeed. My Father coughs very badly 
and has failed much in the past year. My Mother 
is failing all the time, but not so rapidly as Father. I 






Who Became a Bishop 83 

greatly fear that when I leave them this fall, I shall 
never see them again. This will make my parting 
with them a very sad one. 

1 I long very much to hear of the continued suc- 
cess of your travels and of improvement in your health 
and happiness. I have just been rereading your last 
letter which has recalled with painful vividness the 
hope I used to entertain of some day visiting those 
places whose very name cause my heart to beat with 
enthusiasm. But the, in one sense, humble calling I 
have chosen will hardly afford me the means or oppor- 
tunity to do so. It causes me, I assure you, no small 
degree of pain to think that this, like many other fond 
hopes, is proving but an idle dream — not only not to be 
realized, but not even to be dreamed again. But I 
thank my God that there is a brighter hope — that after 
all the disappointments of this life I shall, if I am 
faithful, receive mine own with usury at the last great 
day. 

4 Please give my kindest regards to Miss Varnum 
and Miss Coburn and 

" Believe me as ever 

1 Your affectionate young friend, 

44 Anson R. Graves." 



CHAPTER XI. 

SEMINARY LIFE 



"\URING the summer at home I studied Greek 
*— ^ Testament in the forenoons and worked in the 
field with my brother Daniel in the afternoons. In Oc- 



84 The Farmer Bo]) 

tober I entered the General Theological Seminary, New 
York City, passing examinations for the middle class, or 
second year, except in Hebrew, which I had not 
studied. I decided, however, to enter the junior year 
instead of making up Hebrew. In November I was 
offered the Professorship of Mathematics in St. Steph- 
en's College at a salary of one thousand dollars a year, 
with the opportunity of continuing my Theological 
studies under Rev. Dr. Fairbairn, the President of the 
College. I took counsel with Rev. Dr. Seabury, Sr., 
who said if I intended to devote my life to educational 
work, I better accept the offer, but if I preferred the 
work of a parish priest, I better keep on in the Semi- 
nary. As the latter was my intention, I decided to 
decline the professorship. Still the offer was quite an 
honor and a temptation. On the twelfth of Decem- 
ber the Faculty of the Seminary offered of their own 
accord to advance me and a classmate, A. D. Miller, to 
the middle class, which was accordingly done. 

I spent the Christmas vacation very happily in my 
Uncle's family at Rutland, Vermont. During the rest 
of the year I worked very hard in the Seminary making 
up the Hebrew and the other studies passed over in 
junior year. The first of May I took charge of the 
Sunday school of five hundred children at All Saints' 
Church, New York, and did lay reading for the rector 
at two hundred and fifty dollars a year. While there 
I made the acquaintance of Miss Mary Louise Van 
Wagenen, who had charge of the infant class of sixty 



Who Became a Bishop 85 

children. She became a life-long friend and in later 
years a generous contributor to my missionary work. 
This work at All Saints proved too hard for me in 
addition to my Seminary studies so that one Sunday I 
fainted in church and was sick for some time. How- 
ever, I passed my examinations at the end of the year 
with credit, but it had been a very hard year. 

During the summer vacation I remained at the Sem- 
inary, writing sermons the first part of it and later 
worked under the direction of Rev. Dr. Dix collecting 
funds in the Diocese of New York toward the en- 
dowment of the Diocese of Albany. The next year 
I carried on the Sunday school work at All Saints' 
Church and finished my course in the Seminary. I 
graduated and was ordained deacon in the Church of 
the Transfiguration, New York, by Bishop Horatio 
Potter in June, 1870. 

In the Seminary my warmest friends among the 
students were Rev. W. B. T. Smith and Rev. J. Lewis 
Parks. I graduated in the same class as Rt. Rev. 
Edwin G. Weed, who was the first one in our class 
and the only one except myself to become a bishop. I 
made other friends, many of whom have done noble 
work in the Church and passed to their reward. 

As I had spent only two years in the Seminary, I 
hardly felt like entering at once upon independent work 
as rector of a parish. I felt the need of further prepara- 
tion and study. Accordingly, before my ordination 
and with the consent of my Bishop, I engaged to be- 



86 The Farmer Boy 

come for a year the assistant, or curate, of Rev. Dr. B. 
H. Paddock, the rector of Grace Church, Brooklyn 
Heights. He was a faithful and systematic parish 
priest and my home in his family was delightful. I 
learned many things from his methods and those of his 
predecessor, Dr. E. A. Hoffman. My duties were to 
assist at all services, superintend the Sunday school and 
call on all non-pew-holders, of whom there were a 
great many among the poor. I had very little preaching 
to do except when the rector was away on his summer 
vacation. I spent my forenoons studying and preparing 
sermons, taking the greatest pains with the sermons. 
Often I spent two weeks on a sermon, making it the 
very best I possibly could. I have not been ashamed 
to use all my life some of the sermons I wrote while a 
deacon. The afternoons I devoted to making calls, 
going the full round every month. The year passed 
pleasantly and profitably. 

The special event to me this year was the death of 
my dear friend and patroness, Mrs. Joseph B. Varnum. 
From the time she saw me when I was in college to 
her death she had taken a lively interest in my welfare, 
occasionally sending me gifts to help me along. Much 
of that time she was in Europe, but we had corre- 
sponded steadily. At her death, she left me two thou- 
sand dollars in her will with the expressed wish that I 
should travel abroad. This made it possible for me 
to realize a long-cherished wish. As soon as my year 
was over at Grace Church, I prepared to go. One of 



Who Became a Bishop 87 

the wardens of the church, Mr. Henry E. Pierrepont, 
Sr., added one hundred dollars to my purse. On the 
fourth of June, 1871, I was ordained priest with my 
friend, A. D. Miller, in Holy Trinity Church, Brook- 
lyn, New York, by Bishop Littlejohn. On June 24th I 
took the steamer with not a person on board I had ever 
seen before. 



CHAPTER XII. 

EUROPE. 

ON the steamer, I made the acquaintance of 
Mr. and Mrs. Morris Phillips and a Mr. Van 
der Wielen. Mr. Phillips was editor of the New 
York Home Journal. Mr. Van der Wielen was a 
native of Holland, but for a number of years had been 
a teacher of fine arts in Philadelphia. As their line of 
travel coincided with mine for a while, we arranged 
to keep together through Ireland and Wales. The 
Fourth of July was celebrated on shipboard by the 
firing of a salute, an oration, a poem and singing of 
national airs. 

On landing at Queenstown we went immediately to 
Cork and from there visited Blarney Castle in a jaunt- 
ing car. The things that impressed me most were the 
light green, almost yellow, color of vegetation, the 
beggar boys running after our car and the men and 



88 The Farmer Boy 

women in the fields trying to make hay in the rain. It 
was with the greatest difficulty that they could make 
hay or save the crops that year, for it rained every day 
except three where I was for the next month. Blarney 
Castle was the first castle I ever saw and I was greatly 
interested in the curious passages through the walls, 
the caves underneath, the witches' kitchen and the stair- 
way in the center of the wall. Of course, we kissed 
the Blarney Stone, Mr. Phillips holding me by the 
coat while I hung down head first to reach it and then 
I did the same for him. At the Lakes of Killarney we 
went around through the Gap of Dunloe and back 
through the Lakes. We drank the goat's milk offered 
for sale by the bare-footed, fresh looking Irish girls, 
but declined the " mountain dew," whiskey, which they 
also offered for sale. From there we visited the sights 
of Dublin, then crossing the Irish Sea we enjoyed the 
grand scenery of North Wales until we came to Ches- 
ter in England. There my friends left me for Lon- 
don and I turned north through Liverpool and Lan- 
caster to Furness Abbey in the Lake Country of Eng- 
land. I had planned to walk all through the Lake 
Country, but was taken sick at Furness Abbey and was 
obliged to take the stages. 

It is not my purpose to write a book of travels nor 
describe all I saw in the next eleven months, but only 
give an outline of the course I took and speak of a 
few things which impressed me most. A few quota- 
tions from memoranda made at the time or from letters 



Who Became a Bishop 89 

written from various places will perhaps best express 
my impressions: 

' Grasmere, July 14th, 1871. Surrounded by the 
noblest mountains, alone in the quietest churchyard, 
sitting by the grave of Wordsworth ! Whether he had 
much genius or little, let critics decide. At all events, 
he was a good man and the good alone are great. If 
those who had more genius were to crown it as he did 
with Godliness, they might make this world a sunnier 
and better one. I wish I were more like Wordsworth, 
appreciating and loving better the things he loved." 

From Carlisle I went through southern Scotland. 
One day I devoted to the land of Burns, beginning with 
his grave at Dumfries and ending with his birth place 
at Ayr. During the early part of the day, I was de- 
pressed by a spirit of sadness and I could recall nothing 
but the serious poems of Burns and the misfortunes of 
his life. This feeling culminated when I passed the 
1 Woods of Montgomery " and repeated what I could 
of M Highland Mary." A great change came over my 
spirits when I arrived at Ayr, w r alked along the road 
taken by Tarn O'Shanter, looked into old Alloway 
Kirk and stood on the Brig o' Doon. I became as 
merry as a bird in spring. About these places were 
two hundred Scotch lads and lasses, who had come on 
an excursion from Glasgow. Some of these were 
dancing hornpipes, some in groups on the grass eating 
luncheon and some frolicking in a familiar way which 
recalled many a couplet from the poetry of Burns. 



90 The Farmer Boy 

The day I spent in the land of Burns was to me a great 
day full of noble impressions and pleasant recollections. 

Abbotsford and the land of Scott was equally full 
of interest, but I had neither the time nor the solitude 
for receiving impressions. In company with a dozen 
others I was hurried through Scott's house, Abbottsford, 
and shown a hundred objects of interest in half an 
hour. " This is the picture of Sir Walter when a child 
and this the snuff box of Napoleon; this the desk where 
Sir Walter wrote his novels and this the seal of Mary, 
Queen of Scots; this the bust of Bailie Nicol Jarvie 
and these swords from the battle of Flodden Field, etc., 
etc." If I had had time to sufficiently contemplate the 
wonderful objects, perhaps Rob Roy's gun might have 
inspired me to write a border song, or Bruce's armor an 
oration, or the keys of the Old Talbooth a moral ser- 
mon. Possibly I might have absorbed from Sir Wal- 
ter's last suit of clothes something of that power which 
enabled its wearer to create all those characters which 
have become to us synonyms of good or evil people. 

I was greatly interested in Lochs Lomond and Ka- 
trine, Stirling and Edinburgh Castles, Dryburgh and 
Melrose Abbeys, but the continued rain and my weak- 
ness from the bilious attack dampened the joy. In 
eastern and central England I visited Durham, Ripon, 
Lincoln, Rugby, Kenilworth, Stratford, Oxford, and 
London. England, on the whole, I found about as I 
expected. I was neither disappointed nor much sur- 
prised. In better health and under pleasanter circum- 



Who Became a Bishop 91 

stances, I might have entered more fully into the spirit 
of what I saw. 

" Antwerp, Aug. 5th, 1871. 

1 I am not a critic of paintings, and I am thankful 
that I am not. Yesterday, in the cathedral here, I 
stood before the great master work of Rubens, '' The 
Descent from the Cross.' Others praised the shading 
and the coloring, discussed it in detail and then passed 
on. After they were done, I sat down before the 
picture and gazed upon its speaking surface. It w T as 
not difficult to comprehend the tale it told. A dead 
Christ was written on every inch of the canvas. It was 
in the careful, tearful faces of the disciples, in the de- 
sponding features of the women at the foot of the cross 
and above all in the pallid, corpse-like face and form of 
Jesus. What must have been the feelings of those dis- 
ciples engaged in the sad duty of removing him from 
the cross to the grave, not anticipating the resurrection 
and the glorious things that followed ! We can almost 
hear them say, ' We trusted it had been he which should 
have redeemed Israel.' We now know the end of the 
story when we read about the cross, hence our difficulty 
in realizing that Jesus was actually dead. It seems 
more to us as though he swooned away and revived on 
Easter. But there is the truth on the canvas in all its 
dreadful reality. That body is heavy, helpless, lifeless 
and those rigid features, though expressive of all he 
suffered, are now as cold and senseless as the wood or 
nails of the cross itself. 

To-day, as I was going through a street in Ant- 
werp, I saw a little girl standing by a very large pump 
with a pitcher partly filled with water. As I came 
along, she offered me a drink, which offer I accepted. 



92 The Farmer Boy 

I then took hold of the great handle and by a single 
stroke refilled the pitcher. Another little girl, who had 
observed the act, came running across the street and 
put her little hand trustfully in mine. She did not say 
a word in her native Flemish nor I one in English, but 
while I looked down into her face and she up into mine, 
much passed between us in that higher, common lan- 
guage which God was pleased to grant even to the chil- 
dren of Babel. I have since prayed for her in English 
and perhaps the stranger gentleman, whose name she 
will never know in this world, has been interwoven with 
her Flemish prayer. God grant it be so, for He well 
knows I need the prayers of those who are more simple 
and more trustful than myself. I saw some little children 
cross themselves with holy water as they left the cathe- 
dral. Perhaps that little act in them was as accept- 
able to God as the sermons of us rigid thinkers against 
idolatry and superstition." 

Before reaching Antwerp, I had visited the cities of 
Belgium and there picked up my steamer friend, Mr. 
Van der Wielen, who was to travel with me through 
Switzerland. Together we visited Aix la Chapel and 
Dusseldorf. At the latter place, his eyes, which had 
failed and prevented him from becoming an artist, were 
examined by the great oculist, Doctor Moren. An 
operation would be necessary, but the Doctor told him 
to go on through Switzerland and build up his physical 
strength first. Up the Rhine together we went, by all 
the castles and ruins where even Spain and Sweden had 
once contended for the mastery. We stopped at Co- 
logne, the Drachenfels, Coblentz, Frankfort, Heidel- 



Who Became a Bishop 93 

berg and Strassburg. In Switzerland we visited Basle 
and Bern, then on foot and by boat to the lakes and 
falls, then over the Great Scheideck to Grindelwald, 
over Wengern Alp where we saw the great avalanches 
and heard them thundering down from the Jungfrau, 
thence down to Lauterbrunnen and to Geneva. From 
there we went through Lake Geneva to the Prison of 
Chillon and by rail to Martigny, then two weeks on 
foot to Chamouni and the great glacier there, thence 
up to the Hospice of Saint Bernard, where we saw the 
famous dogs, one of which had saved fifteen lives, 
thence up the Rhone Valley to the Rhoner glacier, 
over the Furca Pass and down to Altdorf, where 
William Tell is said to have shot the apple off his 
son's head. We climbed Mount Rigi to see the sun 
set and the Alpen glow on the distant snow-capped 
mountains then came to Lucerne. Here Mr. Van der 
Wielen left me for his Doctor in Dusseldorf. 

Here I found my Seminary friend, Rev. W. B. T. 
Smith, in charge of two boys. The four of us then 
walked through North Switzerland, via Shauffhausen 
and Constance, sometimes taking boat or cars for short 
distances, then on foot seventy miles through the Ba- 
varian Alps to Oberammergau. There we saw the 
famous Passion Play on the tenth of September. Here 
Mr. Smith and his boys left me to go through the 
Tyrol, while I turned north into Germany. 

The evening I left Oberammergau, I had a thrilling 
experience in crossing a spur of a mountain by an un- 



94 The Farmer Boy 

frequented foot path. It became very dark when I 
was on the summit and I had to grope my way through 
the forest down the mountain. At length I saw a dim 
light and came to a shepherd's cottage. Here were sev- 
eral rough-looking men who directed me across a 
marshy plain full of ditches. It was so dark that I 
had to feel for the path and the planks across the ditches 
with my Alpine stock. I arrived at the little inn of 
Eschenlohe about ten o'clock. The next morning I 
walked twenty-four miles before one o'clock to Wil- 
heim, where I took the train to Munich. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

GERMANY . 

IN Germany, I visited in the following order Munich, 
Prague, Dresden, Berlin, Postdam, Leipsic, Nur- 
emberg, Stuttgart and Ulm. An extract from a letter 
written to my life-long friend, Philip Potter, will show 
the spirit with which I appreciated and enjoyed the 
things I saw: 

" Nuremberg, Germany, Oct. 1st, 1871. 

" My dear Philip : 

1 It is Sunday afternoon, cold and rainy, and I am 
going to begin a letter to you. Nuremberg is just the 
quaintest old town you ever saw, or I either. In an art 



Who Became a Bishop 95 

exhibition in Brooklyn, I once saw a painting called 
1 Nuremberg by Moonlight,' and I looked at it for a 
long time. It so happened that I entered the town by 
moonlight and leaving my bag at a hotel, I strolled 
through the town. It was after nine o'clock and the 
streets were deserted, so I indulged in the very pleasant 
habit of putting my hands in my pockets and talking 
to myself. ' Quaint old town this, sure enough ! Some 
streets very wide, with the moon shining down on the 
pavements — others very narrow and very dark — no 
moonshine at all ! What big houses with high, pointed 
roofs and with gable ends to the street! I wonder how 
they happened to be so? I suppose some Titan played 
a trick on the sleeping burghers and turned the houses 
round endwise to the street. But how high they are! 
There is one that looks like a pyramid of Egypt Let 
me count the stories. One, two, three up to the eaves ; 
above the eaves one, two, three, four, five, six ! What a 
garret there must be! Up to the front edges of the 
roof there is something like a flight of stairs, only very 
big steps, made for ghosts to climb, I suppose. What 
have we here? A little hill all paved over? No, a 
bridge rather high above the water and wondrous old 
— made in the time of Noah, when they had high 
water! And the river, how narrow and slow and deep 
it is! It looks like a great, black, sleepy dragon creep- 
ing through the town, under the walls and under the 
bridges and under the eaves of the houses. I shouldn't 
like to be drowned in that river, but if I must be, I'd 
rather take it up there where the moon is shining on 
the water than here under the shadow of this grim old 
house. 

This thing here in the market place must be the 



96 The Farmer Boy 

Goose-man Fountain I have read about. Yes, an iron 
peasant holding two geese under his arms, with the 
water running out of their mouths. It is made, I sup- 
pose, as a kind of allegorical-looking glass— two geese, 
two men, one with the geese under his arms, the other, 
myself, with the goose under his hat! I think I will 
move on now and let some one else stand in my place. 
' This here is the city wall and the gate and the 
moat and the draw-bridge, only the bridge doesn't 
draw any more. But what is this little grated door in 
the wall with an old rusty coat-of-arms on it? I'll 
just look in. A long stairway leading down under the 
wall to Hades, I suppose. There is an old man at 
the bottom with a candle flickering in the dark. I am 
just going down. Down, down, darker and damper! 
A suite of rooms is here, not large but pretty high, 
arched over with brick and a hole in the top. The 
judges' rooms were above and the condemned criminal 
was let down through that hole to be punished here. 
And these things here are the instruments, very con- 
venient, very ingenious! For instance, that whip with 
fifty strands and at the end of each an iron ball the 
size of a pea and five sharp points on each ball ! One 
need not strike many times with that whip! That iron 
band with knobs inside and screw for tightening it is the 
Spanish crown for the head of the prisoner. That chair 
with sharp pegs all over the seat was a very uncom- 
fortable thing to sit on. I should not like to sit on it 
while a German waiter was bringing my dinner ! That 
upright board with a sharp edge is the Spanish horse. 
To keep the rider from falling off, one of these stones 
weighing twenty pounds was hung to each foot. What 
inventive devils men are ! And this bench with a roller 



Who Became a Bishop 97 

in the middle covered with sharp points and one at each 
end with ropes affixed was for stretching men on — in- 
tended, I suppose, for making short criminals into long 
ones and long ones into two! This next room is lower 
and darker and damper. Nothing in it? Oh, yes. I 
see in the middle against the back wall something like 
an Egyptian mummy only, it is upright and larger and 
uglier. It is called the Iron Virgin. I do not think 
iron virgins are handsome. Oh, this one opens, does 
it? And they put a criminal inside? Yes, and those 
irons spikes five inches long in the front part go into the 
man when they shut the Virgin — the two upper ones 
into his eyes and several others into his breast. And 
because it shuts hard with a man inside, this screw wich 
one end against the opposite wall and other against the 
Virgin shuts it slowly but surely. When the screams 
and groans from within cease, pull this bolt, the bottom 
drops and the victim falls into the water which I see 
sparkling thirty feet below. This skull here was fished 
up from the canal and these little square holes in the 
back part of the eye-sockets are where the spikes went 
in! ' I say, Old Man with the candle there is no use 
of your spluttering German to me any longer for I have 
seen and heard enough. Just show me the way out of 
this place as quickly as possible, for it is so damp and 
cold I shall catch the asthma and not sleep for a week. 
In faith, I shall hardly dare go to sleep for a week, 
lest I dream of Iron Virgins. 

" Truly your friend, 

" Anson R. Graves." 

At Vevey, in Switzerland, I rejoined Rev. Mr. 
Smith and the two boys he had in charge, on the seventh 
day of October. There we remained four weeks, 



98 The Farmer Boy 

reading up on Italy, which we were next to visit. The 
forenoons were given to study and reading and the after- 
noons to rowing on the Lake or climbing the vine-cov- 
ered hills. The fifth of November ended our stay at 
Vevey. The two boys in Mr. Smith's care went by 
train through the Mont Ceni Tunnel to Milan, while 
Mr. Smith and myself started to walk over the Simplon 
Pass into Italy. The snow was two feet deep on the 
summit of the Simplon and avalanches had filled the 
road in several places with deep snow. We were 
nearly exhausted with hard walking, but the monks at 
the Hospice warmed and fed us, so we went on and 
made thirty miles that day. After that we walked two 
days in heavy rain. Before reaching Como and Milan 
we had walked one hundred and eighty-two miles 
through Baveno on Lake Maggiore, Lugano and then 
Belagio on Lake Como. The mountains were crimson 
with autumn foliage and the scenery everywhere mag- 
nificent. In Italy we visited all the principal cities and 
art galleries, also Herculaneum and Pompeii. The 
following is an extract from a letter to Philip Potter : 

" Naples, December 20th, 1871. 
* I have been on the summit of Vesuvius to-day, 
stood on the edge of the crater, looked right down into 
his blood-red throat and felt his hot, sulphurous breath 
on my cheek. Now and then he groaned and muttered 
and then breathed forth the fumes with greater fury. 
I loosed some large stones which went tumbling into his 
throat, but he swallowed them without winking. Sa- 
turn-like he took them for his own children which in 



Who Became a Bishop 99 

fact they were. Vesuvius is a grim old chimney and 
miles before one reaches the summit there is nothing but 
lava, cinders and black sand." 

From Naples I went to Brindisi and took steamer 
through the Greek Islands to Athens, where I remained 
ten days, examining all the ruins and places very fa- 
miliar to a student of classical Greek. In returning, on 
account of storms, accidents and quarantine, I was 
twenty days getting to Mentone, in Southern France. 
There I spent four weeks, teaching the boys whom Mr. 
Smith had left in my care and exploring the mountain 
paths. On the twenty-fifth of February, I sailed with 
one of the boys from Marseilles, France, to Barcelona, 
Spain. In that country we visited Saragossa, Madrid, 
Seville, Grenada, where we saw the Alhambra, made 
famous by Washington Irving and the events of history. 
I also went to Toledo to see the cathedral and the fac- 
tory of the famous Toledo blades, or swords. 

On my return to Madrid from the south of Spain, 
I had this experience. I was then alone and arrived in 
Madrid late at night. I started to walk half a mile from 
ihe station to the hotel with a great crowd of people 
who got off the train. It was up a very wide avenue 
with trees between the different driveways and walks. 
As I went on, the people drifted off into the side streets 
until at last I was all alone. Ahead of me I saw a 
tall man with a Spanish cloak over his shoulders. As 
soon as he caught sight of me, he turned and started 
at a quick pace to intercept me. It was evident that he 



100 The Farmer Boy 

intended to strike me down, probably with a dagger, 
and rob me. I kept straight on, but quickly changed 
my knapsack to my left hand, put my right hand into 
my overcoat pocket and grasped a revolver. The man 
saw the movement and when within ten feet of me 
turned off and went the other way. 

From Spain we went to Paris and then through Bel- 
gium and Holland on to London. There I spent two 
weeks buying books for my library. I then took the 
boys through Southern Scotland and around to Liver- 
pool, where we boarded the steamer for New York on 
the twenty-seventh of April. While in London, I re- 
ceived a call to the rectorship of St. Luke's Church, 
Plattsmouth, Nebraska. This was a town twenty miles 
south of Omaha, on the west bank of the Missouri 
River. On arriving in Brooklyn, I reported to my 
Bishop as ready for work. He said there were two 
places I could have, but that he thought it was my 
duty, being young and single, to go to Nebraska and 
help Bishop Clarkson, who found it difficult to get 
clergymen. I bowed to his suggestion and went. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

WORK IN THE WEST. 

HE seventeenth of June, 1872, found me in Platts- 
mouth, Nebraska, ready to take charge of my 
first parish. My friend, Philip Potter, through whose 



T 



Who Became a Bishop 101 

influence the call had come to me, was then in business 
twenty -five miles south of Plattsmouth at Nebraska 
City. I entered upon my work with much enthusiasm, 
although I should have preferred a newer place and 
work more strictly missionary in character. There was 
plenty to do and I worked hard to do it. In December 
I took a severe cold riding horseback to a mission sta- 
tion in the country, and was taken down with typhoid 
fever. The physician partly broke the fever, but I 
was in bed three weeks. Those were the only Sunday 
services I missed on account of health for the next 
thirty-eight years. After getting up and holding Christ- 
mas services I went to my friend in Nebraska City for 
a rest. The fever was still in my system so that I was 
very lame. It finally culminated in a fever, or bone 
sore on my left arm which remained open most of the 
time for the next two years, sapping me of strength 
and courage. I was very lonely in my work at Platts- 
mouth, caused partly, I suppose, by the drain upon my 
health. The following lines written to a friend in the 
east expressed my feelings: 

"' Alone with God and doing of his work, 
Master and man! Mingling with the world 
But yet not of it; delving on the earth 
For things not earthy; casting at His feet 
The gems I find, immortal souls redeemed 
And gathered from this world of waste and woe. 
Persuading, battling others, yet alone — 
Master and man, alone, alone with God." 



102 The Farmer Boy 

In the thirteen months I was in Plattsmouth, I wrote 
twenty-five new sermons, making them the very best I 
could and always delivering them on Saturday in the 
empty church before preaching them on Sunday More 
than half the time I preached extempore, but it came 
very hard for me and I was often discouraged. I told 
Bishop Clarkson that I was worked out and preached 
out and desired a change. He wanted me to go to 
North Platte, three hundred miles farther west. I 
shrank from the still lonelier life I should have there 
and accepted a call to assist Rev. D. B. Knickerbacker 
in his large parish and many missions ii} and around 
Minneapolis, Minnesota. I made some good friends 
in Plattsmouth, so that many years afterwards, when 
I became Bishop, the parish sent me an offering every 
year for my missionary work. 

In Minneapolis I had a lovely home in Dr. Knicker- 
backer's family and my health gradually improved. I 
had charge of three mission chapels in the city and two 
in the country, alternating between them and often 
preaching in the parish church of Gethsemane in the 
evening. The work was hard but interesting and as I did 
not have to preach twice in the same place on Sunday, 
I needed but one sermon a week. I had written twelve 
sermons while a deacon, twenty-five while at Platts- 
mouth and this year I wrote only twelve, but took the 
greatest pains to make them the very best I could write, 
I gradually gained courage to extemporize much of the 
time. I here learned the practicability of a parish doing 



Who Became a Bishop 103 

a great deal of mission work in its vicinity and sur- 
rounding country. The three city missions I then had 
charge of have long since grown into self-supporting 
parishes. 

The striking feature of this year's work was the 
parochial missions we held in four of the mission sta- 
tions. Dr. Knickerbacker helped in some of them, but 
left the most of it to me. A parochial mission, that is, 
a series of preaching services every day for a week or 
more, was a new thing in this country then. Rev. 
Messrs. Morgan and Bonham had lately introduced 
it from England. These missions which we held in 
Lent were the first ever held in Minnesota or in the 
far west. Although the weather was bad they were 
well attended and resulted in large confirmation classes. 

Before the year was over I received a call to All 
Saints' parish, Northfield, Minnesota, and felt it my 
duty to accept. There I labored for two years and 
kept up two mission stations in country school houses 
seven and nine miles away. There was a Congrega- 
tionalist college in Northfield and the students, being 
free to go where they pleased Sunday evenings, began 
to crowd our little church, filling even the aisles and 
vestry room. With the evening collections, we started 
a fund for enlarging the church. About half the can- 
didates I presented for confirmation were from the coun- 
try missions. A fine rectory was built during my stay 
there. I often spent Mondays in Faribault with the 
professors and students of the Divinity School and occa- 



104 The Farmer Boy 

sionally a student would spend a Sunday with me. 
This was a great comfort in my lonely life. 



CHAPTER XV. 

WORK IN NEW ENGLAND. 

A T the end of two years' work in Northfield, I felt 
** the need of a long rest, so I resigned the parish 
and went east in 1 876 to visit the Centennial Exhibition 
in Philadelphia and see my old friends. After a month 
in Philadelphia, I took charge for three months of the 
old parish at West Claremont, New Hampshire, while 
the rector, my seminary friend and companion in foreign 
travel, Rev. W. B. T. Smith, went off, at the request 
of his Bishop, to start a mission at Sanborn, New 
Hampshire. Then the rector at Charlestown, New 
Hampshire, wished to go abroad, so I took his work 
there for three months. In these places the work was 
easy and pleasant, and the time spent in them proved as 
good as a vacation to build up my strength and courage 
for independent work. 

While visiting my cousin, Mrs. Emily Graves Col- 
lins, in Brattleboro, Vermont, I was introduced by her 
in the church to a young lady by the name of Mary 
Totten Watrous. Her stepfather was a warden of the 
church there and lived within a block of my Cousin's. 








REV. A. R. AND MRS. GRAVES AT THE TIMK OF THEIR MARRIAGE 



' <, 






Who Became a Bishop 105 

My Cousin knew Miss Watrous well and spoke highly 
of her character. Social intercourse and games of 
croquet brought us much together until our intimacy led 
on to respect and love. I frequently visited her from 
Claremont and Charlestown and in the autumn we be- 
came engaged. The uncertainty of my future work 
prevented our marriage until after Easter the following 
spring. My wife has been popular and a favorite in 
all my parishes and while I was active as Bishop she 
was the efficient president of the Woman's Auxiliary 
and Ladies' Guilds of the whole District. While I 
was in charge of Northern California, she visited all 
the parishes with me and organized branches of the 
Auxiliary in many places. She has always been very 
faithful in our home and made it the home as well of 
our parishioners and clergy. We have had six chil- 
dren, all of whom lived to grow up and become active 
communicants of the Church. 

After the rector of Charlestown returned from 
England, Bishop Niles of New Hampshire asked me 
to take charge of a mission at Littleton, in the northern 
part of the state. It was in the midst of the White 
Mountains, a beautiful and interesting country. An 
old house was bought there for a rectory, which I 
papered and fitted up with my own hands. On the 
second day of the following April, Easter Tuesday,, I 
was married to Miss Watrous and, for the first time 
since leaving my father's home sixteen years before, 
had a home of my own. The four years I spent at 



106 The Farmer Boy 

Littleton were happy and profitable. My salary was 
about one thousand dollars a year and we managed to 
lay by about one hundred dollars each year. Here 
two of our children were born. I started several mis- 
sions in country school houses and one in the village 
of Whitefield, where a church has since been built. On 
one occasion, I took a long missionary trip with Rev. 
J. B. Goodrich into the north end of the state, where 
our Church was then unknown. On this trip we held 
the first services of our Church at Groveton and Cole- 
brook. 

I often went camping and tramping among the moun- 
tains, sometimes with cousins from Yale College and 
sometimes with brother clergymen. One time I had a 
convocation of the clergy of eastern Vermont and 
western New Hampshire in a deserted logging camp 
back in the mountains. From such trips I became an 
expert trout fisherman. I climbed Mount Washington 
in the dead of winter and visited the Signal Service 
officers, one of whom had been an old schoolmate in 
Rutland. While there, the thermometer went down 
to twenty-eight degrees below zero and I froze my nose 
while going a few rods against the wind. 

While missionary at Littleton, I received calls to 
Cheyenne, Wyoming, and to Boise, Idaho, but my 
work seemed so prosperous and blessed where I was 
that I declined the distant and uncertain prospects in 
the far west. In 1880, a call came from St. Peter's 
Church, Bennington, Vermont, and as both the town 



Who Became a Bishop 107 

and church were larger and seemed to offer better op- 
portunity for work, I felt it my duty to accept. We 
moved there in the summer. My family and goods 
went by train, but I drove our pony down the Connec- 
ticut Valley to Brattleboro and then across the Green 
Mountains to Bennington. As I look back upon it 
now, I doubt if the opportunity at Bennington proved 
any better than it was at Littleton. There were little 
villages and country school houses where I opened mis- 
sions, holding services in them Sunday afternoons, but 
the Puritan prejudices inherited for over a hundred 
years seemed to hamper aggressive work for our Church. 
As the older people of the parish seemed to prefer 
written sermons to extempore, I improved the oppor- 
tunity in writing many carefully prepared sermons 
which proved an invaluable help in my later and larger 
work in the west. In the three years I was there, I 
wrote seventy-seven sermons. For recreation I fished 
the trout streams in the summer and in the fall and 
winter hunted on the near mountains. Old as the coun- 
try was, partridges, woodcock, rabbits and trout could 
be readily found, so I rarely went out for a few hours 
that I did not bring back all we needed for the table. 

The only trouble I ever had in a parish was here 
with the organist, who resigned because I insisted on my 
right to have something to say as to what hymns should 
be sung. However, that was only a slight ripple on 
the placid waters of a long and peaceful life-work. 
The bishops, vestries and committees with whom I have 



108 The Farmer Boy 

worked have always been reasonable and helpful. If 
I had laid the matter of the organist in Bennington 
before the vestry at first, it would have been the wiser 
course and the vestry would have saved me all trouble. 
All the people at Littleton and Bennington were 
warmly attached to me, as far as I could tell, and re- 
gretted the separation when I resigned. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

GETHSEMANE CHURCH, MINNEAPOLIS. 

r\N the fifteenth of June, 1883, Rev. D. B. Knick- 
^-^ erbacker, D.D., rector of Gethsemane Church, 
Minneapolis, Minnesota, accepted the bishopric of In- 
diana, to which he had been elected. He recommended 
me to the vestry of Gethsemane, and I was immediately 
elected rector at a salary of one thousand and five hun- 
dred dollars a year. There seemed to open to me then 
the opportunity for aggressive work for which I had 
long prayed and waited. Dr. Knickerbacker had be- 
gun his work there twenty-seven years before in 1856. 
He had built the parish up from a small mission of less 
than a dozen communicants to be the largest and most 
active parish in the diocese. Although its people were 
not wealthy, Bishop Whipple spoke of it repeatedly in 
his annual addresses as leading the diocese both in con- 



Who Became a Bishop 109 

tributions and active works. It was no easy matter to 
follow Dr. Knickerbacker as rector who was not only 
endeared to his people but next to James Lloyd Breck 
was the most active missionary outside his parish in the 
American Church. While rector of a city church he 
started and maintained at one time or another more than 
a dozen outside missions. He had held missionary 
services and preached in more than a hundred different 
places in Minnesota. To him and the Brotherhood of 
Gethsemane (started long before St. Andrew's 
Brotherhood), the Church in Minnesota owes an in- 
estimable debt. I accepted the rectorship of Geth- 
semane, where I had been assistant ten years before 
and succeeded him on the first of September, 1883. 

In the previous May the corner-stone for a new 
stone church for Gethsemane Parish had been laid to 
take the place of the dilapidated, wooden building 
which, with several enlargements, had served the parish 
for over twenty years. The walls of the new church 
were about ten feet high when I took charge in Sep- 
tember. When the season for building closed in the 
fall the money paid on the subscriptions was all ex- 
hausted. The times were growing hard and it seemed 
impossible to go on and complete the church. A 
neighboring parish, more wealthy than ours, offered to 
buy or new plant and save us from ruin. Our vestry 
indignantly rejected the proposition and all took hold 
with renewed vigor. The rector alone during the 
winter secured a hundred new subscriptions. All the 



1 1 The Farmer Boy 

organizations in the parish, The Ladies' Aid, The 
Young Ladies' Guild, The Amateur Club, The In- 
dustrial School, The Temperance Society, and The 
Sunday School worked hard for the new church. The 
next spring and summer the building went forward and 
was completed in December, 1 884. 

It was a great day for the parish and the rector 
when we moved from the old church, where water 
froze during the service, to our line new church, which 
could seat a thousand people. We could not sell at 
that time the lots where the old church stood, so we had 
to borrow thirty thousand dollars. We were, however, 
in shape to do a glorious work in a rapidly growing city. 

With the help of the Brotherhood, we were carry- 
ing on several missions in and about the city. We 
started a new one in the south part of the city, which 
in two years became St. Luke's Church, with a rector 
of its own. The congregation at Gethsemane increased 
rapidly. During the six years of my rectorship I 
presented on an average fifty persons a year for con- 
firmation. There were sometimes a hundred and fifty 
present at the confirmation lectures. When I took 
charge of Gethsemane, there were two hundred and 
seventy-four communicants on the roll. My last re- 
port as rector in 1889 showed seven hundred and 
sixty-five communicants, the largest number of any of 
our churches at that time west of Chicago. There were 
then in the parish three hundred and sixty-five families, 
one thousand, five hundred and thirty souls. Baptisms 



Who Became a Bishop 1 1 1 

for the last year were ninety-two, confirmations sixty, 
marriages fourteen, burials thirty-five. The wonder- 
ful growth during those six years was due partly to our 
new church, partly to the rapid growth of the city, partly 
to my noble lay helpers and not entirely to the efforts of 
the rector. That I worked hard and joyously goes with- 
out saying. My Sunday duties for the first three years 
were generally as follows: Early communion, Sunday 
school, which I superintended, mid-day service and 
sermon, a short service and address at the county jail, 
a drive of six miles to Oak Grove or twelve miles to 
Minnetonka Mills for service and sermon, then back 
to Gethsemane for evening service and sermon. There 
were always two week evening sendees with addresses 
and daily service during Lent. After the first year, I 
had an assistant part of the time, which relieved me 
somewhat, though most of his time was given to the 
missions. In some of these years I made eighteen hun- 
dred parochial calls. I was secretary of the Board of 
Missions of the diocese and held a dozen or more 
parochial missions in the country parishes and mission 
stations. On the average, I preached two hundred and 
twenty times a year. The blessed fruits of these efforts 
which were abundant and apparent made the work 
simply glorious. Before I left, we sold the old church 
ground and rectory for thirty-five thousand dollars, 
which paid all our large debt except some interest 
money. That small amount alone prevented the con- 
secration of the church. My family had increased to 



1 1 2 The Farmer Boy 

four children and with my comparatively small salary 
and no rectory, it was not easy to meet expenses. 
While the parish was in debt, I would not demand more 
salary, but the vestry did eventually increase it to two 
thousand dollars and house rent. 

For recreation, which was much needed at times, I 
ran out to some of the neighboring lakes for fishing or to 
the forest for a hunt. Two or three days out of door 
would enable me to sleep and invigorate me for the 
work. My vacation of three weeks was taken in Sep- 
tember, that being the time in the far north when recre- 
ation is most invigorating and most needed for the 
strenuous work of fall and winter. With Rev. C. H. 
Plummer, of Lake City, Minnesota, and one or two 
other friends, we would go to the head waters of some 
branch of the Mississippi and float down in canoes, 
camping on the banks at night. Those streams ran 
through the great pine forests of northern Wisconsin 
and Minnesota. Sometimes we would not see a white 
man for ten days, but only a few Chippeway Indians. 
We always got ducks and fish enough for meat and sev- 
eral times we got deer. Once we got a shot at a large, 
black bear. He was opening clams on the shore and 
Mr. Plummer got a hurried shot from the boat. The 
adventure is described as follows by Mr. Isaac Rich- 
ardson, one of our party, in the Lake City Sentinel: 

1 I jumped ashore with my gun loaded with duck 
shot, hardly knowing which end to shoot from. Par- 
son Plummer followed with his Winchester rifle. Par- 



Who Became a Bishop 1 1 3 

son Graves, who was not quite so excited, took a 
second's time to change his charge from duck shot to 
buck shot, then jumped ashore. We all dove into the 
brush without any caution whatever. Suddenly I saw 
the bear coming from the quarter where Parson Graves 
was beating the bush. Parson Plummer was only 
just in time to get a glimpse of the bear's retreating 
form, moving away with a rolling, shambling, but 
speedy, gait, into a densely wooded swamp, just as 
Parson Graves, who is quick and active, came bound- 
ing along, his gun over his head and passing us with- 
out a look, followed on through mire and brush and, 
like the bear, soon disappeared in the thick under- 
growth. How far he went or where he stopped, we 
do not know and, after waiting what seemed to us a 
long time, we tlew the signal whistle for him to return. 
4 Like a deer hound on the trail, he reluctantly gave 
up the chase and returned, boots and clothes wet and 
muddy, hat turned hindside front, face scratched and 
looking as though he had been up to Oshkosh, having 
some fun with the boys, exclaiming, as the butt of his 
gun rested on the ground, ' Boys, we ought to have 
had the fellow.' 

Some allowance should be made for the heroic col- 
oring cf the above. That evening I got my first deer. 
I was hunting partridges and the deer, not seeing me, 
came bounding by. I quickly put a buck shot car- 
tridge in my shot gun and brought him down. Those 
trips with the rowing and out-of-door life were very 
invigorating and of the greatest benefit to me. On 
one of them I gained ten pounds in weight in twelve 
days. i 



1 1 4 The Farmer Boy 

CHAPTER XVII. 

EARLY EPISCOPATE. 

TN the diocesan convention of Minnesota of 1889, I 
* was elected a Delegate to the General Convention 
of the Church, which met in New York, in October of 
that year. I had no knowledge that Nebraska was to 
be divided and a new missionary district erected. Least 
of all, did I expect that the House of Bishops would 
think of me for the new missionary bishop. I suppose 
it must have been Bishops Knickerbacker, Whipple 
and Gilbert who suggested it to the House of Bishops, 
but, as their proceedings were in secret, I never knew. 
When Bishop Knickerbacker called me out of the 
House of Deputies and told me what had been done, 
it came like a thunderbolt from the clear sky. As the 
House of Deputies had also to approve or disapprove 
of the action, I withdrew until the matter was settled 
by a unanimous vote in my favor. What encomiums 
or criticisms were passed upon me there, I did not know, 
and did not need to know. My district was to be called 
the Jurisdiction of The Platte, and it contained fifty 
thousand square miles of western Nebraska. 

It was no easy matter for me to leave a large and 
enthusiastic parish of nearly eight hundred communi- 
cants and take charge of a vast, thinly-peopled country 
with less than four hundred communicants in the whole 
district. I had to take my growing family from con- 



3 IJB 


T- y - TV 

1 Hi 


' 


( V 1 


■- "«^ ' JL 1 J "J— -- _ 



Rl K.GRAVES, D.D., L.L.D. AT FIFTY YEARS OF AGE. 



Who Became a Bishop 1 1 5 

genial surroundings and the fine schools of Minne- 
apolis to the pioneer life of a far western country. 
However, as the call came unsought, it seemed to come 
from Providence, and I thought it my duty to accept. 
On the first day of January, 1 890, in Gethsemane 
Church, in the presence of a thousand people, including 
most all our clergy of Minnesota, many ministers of all 
denominations, the president of the State University 
and professors, I was consecrated bishop. Thus it was 
that the little farmer boy reached the highest rung in 
the ladder it was permitted him to climb. It was a day 
that brought tears and an overwhelming sense of respon- 
sibility as well as joy that cannot be expressed. That 
I, who had worked quietly and for the most part in 
secluded villages, should have been selected out of over 
four thousand clergymen of the Church, by all the 
bishops as best fitted to set up the standard of the 
Church in a new field and lay the foundations for an- 
other diocese, seemed almost beyond my comprehen- 
sion. However, the thing was done, and it was now 
for me to explore and study my new field and adapt 
myself to the conditions I should find. 

My first official act as bishop, the second day after 
my consecration, was to confirm a class of ten in the 
little town of Montevideo, Minnesota, where I had pre- 
viously held two parochial missions and been instru- 
mental under God in bringing many to Christ. The 
second percon en whom I laid my hands was a physi- 
cian who, before I held my first mission there, had been 



1 1 6 The Farmer Boy 

a pronounced infidel. My next act was to confirm a 
class of twenty-six in Gethsemane Church, which I had 
prepared for confirmation before my consecration. On 
the sixth of January I started for my new field, stop- 
ping a day in Omaha to consult Church authorities 
there. My first visit in my own District of The Platte 
was to a town called Broken Bow, by urgent request 
of the people there. Their pastor, after getting drunk, 
had just left. The new church was sixteen hundred 
dollars in debt. The builders had placed liens upon 
it and there was every prospect that the building and 
four fine lots would be lost to the Church. It was 
thought that by borrowing one thousand dollars from 
the Church Building Fund Commission, the property 
might be saved. After the evening service with a full 
church, I gathered the women in one corner of the 
church and told them I would borrow the one thousand 
dollars if they would undertake to pay it off at the 
rate of two hundred dollars a year. I asked them to 
reorganize their guild then and there and lay their 
plans for work. I then gathered the men in the other 
corner of the church and secured pledges to the amount 
of seven hundred and fifty dollars toward the support 
of a new minister. I soon called a missionary who had 
returned from China, Rev. W. S. Sayres, to the work. 
In the next five years of drought and hardest times the 
debt was all paid, seventy-three persons had been con- 
firmed and the missionary had gone to Michigan to 



Who Became a Bishop 1 1 7 

receive deserved honors there and later to become the 
general missionary, or archdeacon, of that diocese. 

The next day I went to Grand Island, where Church 
services had been held for a longer time than in any 
other place in my District. I found there a beautiful, 
new church, which cost seventeen thousand dollars, 
with a debt of ten thousand dollars on it and every 
prospect, as far as I could see, of losing their property. 
I hunted for some time to find the rector, and routed 
him out of bed at 1 1 :00 A. M. He and the minister 
from Broken Bow had been carousing the night before. 
A few years later, in the hardest times, the Ladies' 
Guild there had paid two thousand dollars of the debt 
and the men of the parish had paid the rest of it. Later 
on this same Ladies' Guild built a good rectory and 
paid for it themselves. Then they bought and paid for 
a fine pipe organ, besides helping the vestry with the 
running expenses of the church. 

I next visited Kearney, where I found the aged rec- 
tor, Rev. R. W. Oliver, D.D., and a small wooden 
church. I was sick with the grippe and a blizzard was 
raging, but I kept on with the work. The people at 
Kearney were enthusiastic to have me make Kearney 
my home. They promised to secure a Bishop's House 
for the district and eventually make the church there 
my cathedral. Inducements were also held out to me 
in Grand Island, Hastings and North Platte, those, 
with Kearney, being the only self-supporting parishes 
in the district. I eventually accepted the offer in 



1 i 8 The Farmer Boy 

Kearney. Evening receptions were given in my honor 
at Grand Island, Kearney and Hastings and every- 
where I was warmly welcomed to my new field. 

Aside from these four parishes, I found two mission- 
aries in the district, Rev. J. M. Bates in the country 
north of the Platte River and Rev. S. F. Myers at 
Arapahoe, south of the Platte. In the whole district 
there were six clergymen, nineteen places where services 
were being held, twelve churches or small chapels and 
three hundred and seventy-five communicants of the 
Church. Five railroads ran across the district from east 
to west. The country had been filling up rapidly with 
homesteaders and ranchmen, but the villages were all 
very small and far apart. Taking a missionary with 
me when I could, but often quite alone, I traversed these 
lines of railroad, stopping a day in each of the villages, 
holding service in the evening and making careful fam- 
ily lists of all interested in our Church. I often had 
to find a place to hold service after arriving in the towns 
and then go from house to house giving notice of the 
service. We generally had good congregations and 
usually several would stay afterwards to give me their 
names as interested in the Church. The service was 
printed on a leaflet and we directed the people as we 
went along what to do. We often had good responses 
where there was not a single member of our Church 
present. All were cordial to us and hopeful of the 
future. 

After going over the southern part of the district, I 



Who Became a Bishop 1 1 9 

returned to Minnesota in February to fill an engage- 
ment made before I was bishop. This was to hold a 
parochial mission of eight days in Marshall, Minnesota, 
where our Church had been lately planted by Rev. J. 
B. Halsey, then in charge. At first, the services were 
held in a small hall, but when that became crowded, the 
Methodists offered us their large church, which also 
became crowded. Before the mission was over, we 
had baptized twelve adults and confirmed fourteen per- 
sons. A church building was soon after built there and 
permanent work established. Before February was 
over, I was back again in The Platte, canvassing the 
towns on the newer railroads, enlarging the field of 
each missionary and dividing some fields to make room 
for additional missionaries as fast as I could find clergy- 
men suited for our frontier work. 

Early in May I moved my family into a house pur- 
chased for the Church by the vestry of St. Luke's 
Church, Kearney. They raised by subscription in 
Kearney eight hundred dollars, and their rector se- 
cured twenty-five hundred dollars in the east for the 
purpose. The balance the vestry was unable to raise 
on account of crop failures and succeeding hard times. 
Some more came from the east through me to pay in- 
terest on the debt and I paid twenty-seven hundred 
dollars myself in the form of rent until all was paid. 

In September, at the earnest request of Bishop Gil- 
bert, of Minnesota, who was overworked, I visited for 
him the missions among the Chippeway Indians in the 



120 The Farmer Boy 

extreme north of Minnesota. In company with the 
faithful missionary and old Seminary friend, Rev. J. A. 
Gilfillan, we traveled through the forests on a buck- 
board and in birch bark canoes over three hundred miles 
off the railroad. We visited eight scattered missions 
and I confirmed thirty Indians. These were prepared 
mostly by the Indian deacons working under Mr. Gil- 
fillan. It was a most delightful trip, on which we found 
game sufficient for our party of Indian guides and boat- 
men. In one place I consecrated, just as the sun was 
going down, an Indian burying ground. We had some 
prayers and then we marched around the graveyard in 
single file singing hymns. Another night we came to 
an Indian camp, where the Indians were drying a moose 
they had killed. There, in the gloomy darkness by the 
light of birch bark torches, I confirmed an Indian 
woman in the open air. The shining lake was on one 
side and our hymns were echoed from the dark forest 
on the other side. Each night the Indians would build 
up a great fire of logs, which would last all night and 
keep the damp and chill of the near-by river away. 
Sometimes we would portage from one lake or great 
bend in the river to another carrying the canoes and bag- 
gage half a mile across the land. The shores of the 
lakes were most beautiful. Near the banks was a strip 
of scrub oaks, whose leaves were crimson, back of them 
a belt of poplars, whose leaves were yellow and then 
for a background the great pine forests with their dark 
green foliage. 



Who Became a Bishop 121 

In October I took my first trip east as bishop to at- 
tend the missionary council and a meeting of the House 
of Bishops in Pittsburg. I then went on farther east 
to raise money for our missionary work and for our 
school. In this I was reasonably successful and made a 
number of good friends, who were a great support and 
encouragement to our work for many years. It was on 
this trip that I found Mrs. Eva S. Cochran at Yonkers, 
who did so much to help found and build up our Church 
school. 

Before the end of November I was back in my Dis- 
trict making visitations. At the end of the first year I 
found I had made three complete visitations of the Dis- 
trict and had gone several times to the vacant or more 
important places. I had traveled twenty-one thousand 
seven hundred and forty-four miles. We had lost four 
clergymen and secured three new ones for our work. 
The summer of 1 890 had been extremely dry, so that 
there was a crop failure almost complete. Many of the 
poorer people moved out of the country and many 
others suffered for food and clothing during the winter. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

1891. 

N February I held a parochial mission in Broken 
Bow, giving three services a day and delivering four 
addresses. In March I took the Lenten services in 



i 



122 The Farmer Boy 

Kearney and prepared a class for confirmation in the 
absence of the rector. I began my spring visitations 
April 1st and kept steadily at them with two short 
breaks until the first of September. The last of April, 
while visiting our sod church at Kennedy, in the sand 
hills, I heard of a ranchman ten miles west of there, who 
was anxious to see me. Rev. Mr. Bates and myself 
drove over there and spent the day. I found the ranch- 
man had been a groomsman at my own wedding in 
Vermont many years before. He now had a wife 
and young children and had been living several years 
in the sand hills. In his early home in Brattleboro, 
Vermont, within the sound of half a dozen church bells, 
he had cared nothing for churches or religion. Living 
on the lonely plains, M in close communion with nature 
and nature's God," he had come to think seriously 
of religion and his responsibility as head of a family. 
He now desired baptism for himself and his children, 
which we gave him after such instruction as the time 
permitted. 

In May I presented a petition from our Missionary 
District to the Council of the Diocese of Nebraska, ask- 
ing for an equitable division of such Church funds as 
had been gathered from the whole state before our 
portion had been set off as a missionary district. We 
gave many strong reasons for such division, pleading 
also the poverty of our drought-stricken country. We 
got nothing, however, except some sympathy from two 
or three of the larger hearted speakers, 



Who Became a Bishop 123 

Early in September, while visiting stations in the 
northern part of our District, I heard of a college mate 
of mine living at Swan Lake, twenty miles off the 
railroad. Rev. Mr. Bates and myself drove to his 
place, a little sod hut beside the lake. He was living 
alone and caring for a herd of cattle belonging to 
others. As there was no wood or coal in the country, 
he kept warm and did his cooking by burning hay. He 
would fill a wash boiler with hay packed hard, then 
turn it bottom side up over the open top of his stove. 
It would thus burn slowly and fall down as it burned. 
His food was largely biscuits baked in this way. Mr. 
Bates shot into a flock of blackbirds and brought down 
sixteen. These we dressed and baked in his oven as a 
relish to our meal of bacon and biscuit. I asked why 
he, a man of education and refinement, lived in such a 
place and in such a way. He looked up into my face 
with his large, hungry eyes and said, ' Because it is 
twenty-five miles from a saloon." He had left college 
on account of his dissipation, had gone from bad to 
worse, until he had now become a hermit to escape 
temptation. Not long after he returned to his mother 
in New Jersey and died there. The night we were at 
Swan Lake we held service in a sod house, at which 
fourteen were present. The men laughed to see us put 
on our robes, but at that service we baptized a woman 
and her daughter who had driven twenty miles to attend 
the service. They drove back to their home in the 



124 The Farmer Boy 

darkness of the night, but we, the next day, attempting 
to follow their course, got lost three times in the sand 
hills. We baptized the sick child of a ranchman on 
our way back. Mr. Bates, in driving into a pond for a 
duck we had shot, suddenly came to a deep place so the 
water ran into the buggy and wet our robes. Such 
little incidents break up the monotony of our work and 
add spice to the hard journeys we felt it our duty to 
make. 

In September, for my vacation, I joined our old 
party from Lake City, Minnesota. We went on the 
Northern Pacific Railroad to Perham on the Red River 
of the North and for two weeks floated in our canoes 
down that river through twelve lakes to Fergus Falls. 
We got many ducks and all the fish we could use. On 
my return, I attended and took active part in the Mis- 
sionary Council of our Church, held that year in De- 
troit, Michigan. 

During that year we had bought an old school-house 
and fitted it up for a chapel at Holdrege ; had done the 
same with an old saloon at St. Paul ; bought property 
at Ord with a house on it for a rectory, using the parlor 
for services; built a neat new church at Callaway, and 
built a sod church in the sand hills, which cost one hun- 
dred and ten dollars. 



Who Became a Bishop 125 

CHAPTER XIX. 
1892. 

WHILE on a trip in the northern part of the Dis- 
trict, April 1st, there came a great blizzard, 
that is, a snow storm with fierce wind. Thousands of 
cattle perished and the railroads were blocked. I was 
storm-stayed so that I missed an appointment — the first 
one since being bishop, over two years. In May, the 
great debt on the church at Grand Island was paid and 
the church was consecrated. In June I was able to 
visit my good friend, Bishop Knickerbacker, in Indian- 
apolis, which was a mutual satisfaction and blessing to 
us both. I addressed his diocesan convention and girls' 
school. 

All the spring and summer three large buildings were 
going up in Kearney for our own Church school. We 
opened the school September 6th, with seven teachers 
and a good attendance of pupils. At first we had 
both boys and girls among the pupils. Much of my 
time had been spent in looking after the building and 
preparing for the opening. Soon after the school 
opened, I went east to raise money for our work and 
attend the General Convention. I pleaded the cause 
of our missionary work in fifteen cities and made some 
more good friends. At the General Convention we 
worked on revising the Prayer Book and elected seven 
missionary bishops. During the year I visited all 



126 The Farmer Boy 

our missionary stations twice and conducted the services 
of our Church in nine new places. 

I was able to report to the Board of Missions, Sep- 
tember 1st, as follows: 

' At the end of two years and eight months, I can 
report the work in this District well organized and sys- 
tematized. All parishes and missions are filled with 
energetic clergymen. The active clergy have increased 
from six to eleven; the communicants from three hun- 
dred and seventy-five to nine hundred and fifty; the 
baptisms from eighty-five a year to two hundred and 
twelve; the confirmations from about fifty to one hun- 
dred and fifty; Church debts have decreased by thir- 
teen thousand, four hundred and sixty-two dollars; 
Church property has been acquired to the value of 
thirty-four thousand, six hundred and seventy-five dol- 
lars. Although the times were still very hard, the 
Lord seemed to prosper us in financial as well as in 
spiritual matters. 



CHAPTER XX. 

1893. 

A T the beginning of Lent, I held a seven days' mis- 
-** sion at our school, preaching each evening and 
answering questions. When at home, I have gen- 
erally conducted service on Sunday evenings at the 
school. 



Who Became a Bishop 127 

On the twenty-third of March, a baby boy was 
born to us — the last of six children — four boys and 
two girls. 

On Ascension Day, I consecrated a new church at 
North Platte, Rev. L. P. McDonald, rector. It had 
been just twenty years to a day since the first little 
chapel was consecrated at which I was also present, 
being then rector of the church at Plattsmouth, in the 
eastern part of the state. Bishop Clarkson and Dean 
Garrett were also present. I received a call at that 
time to become the first missionary there, but declined 
the call. It is interesting to note that the first service 
ever held in North Platte was by Bishop Tuttle, then 
on his way out to Salt Lake for the first time. 

About the middle of May I took a trip with Rev. 
Mr. Bates to our sod church at Kennedy. In the 
three days we drove eighty miles, held two services 
with baptism and confirmation and secured seventy 
game birds with our guns. A few days later, at Bas- 
sett, besides calling on all our people, we bagged nine- 
teen birds. Such recreation, while not interfering with 
our work, was a great relief from the steady grind of 
travel, calls and preaching. I might say here that Rev. 
Mr. Bates, while in charge of from twelve to eighteen 
stations, took up the study of Botany for recreation. 
He became an expert botanist, well known at the 
Smithsonian Institute and Columbia University. He 
discovered over a hundred plants, which were not 



128 The Farmer Boy 

known to exist in Nebraska, and found several which 
were not known to science anywhere. 

After the school closed in June, my two older chil- 
dren and myself visited the World's Fair in Chicago 
for two weeks. All that year the plastering had been 
falling off the eighty rooms in the dormitories of our 
school, owing to the worthless lime used in the work. 
To replaster them cost us eleven hundred dollars, and 
was a hard blow to the school. After a law-suit, which 
dragged along for five years, we got six hundred dollars 
in damages. 

In August three of my children drove with me on a 
camping trip up to the headwaters of the South Fork 
of the Loup River. This was partly to investigate two 
county seats off the railroad, where our missionaries 
had never been, but was chiefly for recreation. We 
camped over Sunday at the source of the river and 
held service in the open air. We went across the 
valley to a sod hut to beg some kindling wood. We 
found a lone woman there who said she had not burned 
a stick of wood or piece of coal for two years. All the 
, cooking and heating were done with ' cow chips." 
We asked for a small pail of drinking water, but she 
could not spare that, as her man was away from home 
and water had to be brought three miles in a barrel. 
We did not wonder that so many of the inmates of 
our insane asylums are women from the lonely ranches 
and farms. 

In September, Rev. Mr. Beecher and myself were 



Who Became a Bishop 129 

on our long driving trip at Gering, holding service in the 
Methodist church. I was nearly through the sermon, 
when there seemed to be a strange light in the church. 
Looking out of the window, we saw a neighboring 
building on fire. In thirty seconds all had left the 
church but myself and a woman who had driven forty 
miles to attend the service. After disrobing, gathering 
up the service books and putting out the lights, I also 
went to the fire. I saw our missionary on the top of 
the building next to the fire dashing pails of water on 
the fire as they were passed up to him from below. He 
was a stalwart man, six feet and three inches tall, and 
made a heroic figure between us and the flames. He 
became very popular there from that time, and fifteen 
years after was sent for five hundred miles to perform 
a wedding in the place. At this writing, 191 1, he is 
bishop of that country in my place. 

Later in the fall I visited a number of stations in 
Minnesota for Bishop Gilbert and after that attended 
the Missionary Council in Chicago. The following is 
from my report to the Beard of Missions: 

1 The past year has been one of steady progress in 
our missionary efforts. The working force of our 
clergy is enlarged ; the baptisms and confirmations have 
increased more than twenty per cent and our money of- 
ferings more than thirty per cent over any previous 
year. Our Church debts have been mostly paid 
off. Our permanent property has increased by five 
thousand dollars. I consecrated one church and 
opened and blessed three new chapels. I delivered 



130 The Farmer Boy 

two hundred and eighty-five sermons or addresses, con- 
firmed one hundred and fifty-nine persons, ordained 
one to the priesthood and two to the diaconate. In 
mid-winter there were one hundred and ten pupils in 
our Church school." 



CHAPTER XXI. 
1894. 

DURING the winter we had no one at our school 
who could teach Greek, and I heard the class 
recite whenever I was at home. I also held service and 
preached often at the school. Until my territory and 
responsibilities were enlarged, I visited all stations in 
my district twice a year. At that time I had a pass on 
the railroads and thought nothing of going two hundred 
miles to hold a service or officiate at a funeral. In 
those days I often carried my shotgun along, as game 
was quite plenty. Driving through the country, we 
often found ponds where ducks and snipe gathered. 
Rabbits, and in some parts, quails were plenty. In the 
smaller hamlets I could visit all around in half a day 
and the other half I could hunt for recreation, holding 
service in the evening. For example, my diary reads: 
" March 29th. At Palisade (a place of about one 
hundred inhabitants). Bill the town for service and 
make calls A. M. Hunt P. M. along the Frenchman 



Who Became a Bishop 131 

Creek, getting seven ducks. Evening, fifty at service 
in Congregational church." In the smaller places we 
often had half the inhabitants at service. Sometimes 
we would drive twenty-five miles between morning and 
evening services in order to reach two places on Sun- 
day. 

One of the interesting trips which I made twice this 
year with the missionary, Rev. G. A. Beecher, after- 
wards Dean of the cathedral at Omaha, was to drive 
from Sidney to the stations on the North Platte River. 
It took a week with service every evening and the dis- 
tance covered was two hundred miles. Sometimes we 
took two teams, a camping outfit and some ladies who 
were good singers, to help with the Church music. 
The places reached were usually Camp Clark, Bayard, 
Gering, Harrisburg and Kimball. On the fall trip this 
year, as we were walking to church at Harrisburg, we 
heard the double report of a gun. Very few were at 
service that night. After service we went to the princi- 
pal store to find a coroner's jury in session and the bcdy 
of a tall cow-boy dead upon the floor. We were told 
that he came into the store drunk, threatening the store- 
keeper and made a motion as if reaching for his re- 
volver. The store-keeper seized a repeating shotgun 
and shot him twice. At the trial he was acquitted, but, 
brooding over it all, he became insane and soon after 
died. 

When I first came to the District of The Platte, we 
had three army posts, Forts Sidney, Niobrara and Rob- 



132 The Farmer Boy 

inson. On my rounds, I always held services in them, 
being heartily welcomed and entertained by the officers. 
I once came to Fort Robinson when the soldiers were 
having their annual target practice. Lieutenant God- 
son induced me to shoot with the soldiers at a target 
five hundred yards away. I took five shots and had 
the good luck to make fourteen points out of a possible 
twenty-five. The average of the dozen soldiers who 
were shooting was eleven and a half points out of a 
possible twenty-five. It was very windy and a bad 
day for shooting, so it must have been mostly good luck 
that helped me beat the soldiers. 

Sometimes in order to meet my next appointment, I 
had to take a night ride. On the first of June I was 
at Grant, in the western part of the state. After evening 
service, the liveryman drove me eighteen miles to 
Ogalalla, to take an early morning train. It was very 
dark and he drove slowly, so it took us most of the 
night. With all his caution, he ran into a barbed wire 
fence, which cut the horses some, but not badly. 
Horses were sometimes maimed for life and even killed 
in that way. 

On the twenty-ninth of June I started with three of 
my children for our summer vacation. We drove four 
hundred miles into the sand hill country northwest of 
Kearney, camping by the way every night. Sometimes 
we would drive nearly a whole day without seeing a 
house. Generally we followed dim trails through the 
hills, but often keeping our direction by the compass 



Who Became a Bishop 133 

only. For hours we would not know where we were 
until we came to some lonely ranch house to inquire. 
In ten days we reached our little sod church at Ken- 
nedy, where we spent Sunday and held service. The 
missionary from Valentine, Rev, Mr. Bates, met us 
there. With him and Mr. Piercy, warden and lay- 
reader of the mission, we drove a few miles to Swan 
Lake, where we camped for several days. There we 
caught black bass, but had to cook them and all our 
food with cow chips, as there were no trees within 
twenty miles. 

On our way back we camped one night near a ranch- 
man's house on Beaver Lake. \\ hen we drove up, his 
two daughters were in the middle of the lake swimming 
for shore. The ranchman had a pack of hungry c. 
which had to hunt for their food, as well as for the 
ranchman. \\ hile we were in the house for a few- 
minutes, they stole a kettle of hot stew off the camp 
stove and also a tin pail full of eggs. Only for the 
kindness of the family, we might have gone supperless 
to bed. Afterwards one of those girls was working her 
way through our Church school in Kearney and be- 
came an earnest communicant of the Church. The 
next Sunday we camped by a ranch on the Loup 
River and held service in the house many miles from 
any village. One night we camped near a house where 
a little girl had been bitten by a rattle-snake and died a 
few days before we came. \X e averaged about thirty 
miles a da}', and reached home the last of July. We 



1 34 The Farmer Boy 

had been gone just a month and had slept in a house 
only a few times. 

The summer of 1894 was a remarkable and most 
critical summer for western Nebraska. Hot winds 
from the south blew for weeks at a time. No rain nor 
even cloud came to shield the crops. The thermometer 
ranged from one hundred to one hundred and fifteen 
degrees, Fahrenheit, in the shade. The air was filled 
with a fine, impalpable dust, which made the sun look 
dark red like a ball of fire. The wheat and oats were 
dried up before they ripened. The com everywhere 
turned white and dead when two or three feet high. 
As the people expressed it, "' the crops were fired." 
Pigs and chickens wandered miles from home in search 
of food, and many of them starved to death. The 
wild sunflowers, dwarfed by the drought, were gath- 
ered for feed and fuel. In August and early autumn, 
thousands of settlers refitted the covered wagons in 
which they had come to the country, loaded in what 
things they had left and moved away. It was a sad 
sight to see them wending their way slowly over the 
prairies, homeless and broken-hearted. Some went into 
the mountains farther west and some back eastward to 
their early homes. One day I met several such wagons 
crossing a bridge over the Platte River. I asked them 
where they were from? They answered, ' Perkins 
County." Where are you going? ' Don't know, got 
to get out of this." A woman I knew who owned a 
reaper and horses cut several hundred acres of wheat 



Who Became a Bishop 1 35 

on deserted farms and secured hardly enough to bread 
her family. Here and there was a head of wheat with 
two or three kernels in it. I did not see a single ear 
of corn raised that year in western Nebraska. If pro- 
visions and clothing had not come from the east by 
car-loads, hardly anyone would have been left in the 
land. As it was, I traveled twenty-five miles in Holt 
County without passing an inhabited house where be- 
fore all the land had been occupied. Other counties 
were as bad and some of them were worse. In some 
of the villages and even in Kearney nearly half of the 
houses were vacant. The people had come out poor, 
taken up homesteads and exhausted all their means in 
improvements, so they had nothing left when the 
drought came. Our missionaries everywhere became 
agents for distributing charity from the east. I received 
over a thousand dollars without solicitation for the pur- 
pose. Eighteen hundred and ninety had been a very 
bad year and broke up many homes, but this was worse 
and took the heart and hope out of our people. Many 
farms, which were deserted then, sold fifteen years 
later for twenty-five to eighty dollars an acre. 

At the beginning of 1894, I was able to report to 
the Board of Missions as follows: ' In four years our 
mission stations have increased from nineteen to seventy ; 
our clergy from six to fourteen; the communicants from 
three hundred and seventy-five to one thousand one 
hundred and seventy-three ; the baptisms from one hun- 
dred and sixty-six to two hundred and sixty-six; the 



136 The Farmer Boy 

confirmations from sixty-three to one hundred and fifty- 
nine; the number of services from one thousand one 
hundred and forty-eight to two thousand four hundred 
and six; communions administered from one hundred 
and ninety-six to five hundred and forty-seven ; Sunday 
school teachers and pupils from four hundred and sixty- 
four to nine hundred and thirteen; value of Church 
property from forty-nine thousand six hundred and ten 
to ninety-nine thousand five hundred and forty-six dol- 
lars ; debts decreased from seventeen thousand three hun- 
dred and sixteen dollars and eighty-nine cents to three 
thousand one hundred and thirty-seven dollars and 
seven cents; receipts from the District increased from 
eight thousand three hundred and five dollars and sev- 
enty-eight cents to twenty thousand, five hundred and 
sixteen dollars and twenty-three cents. That year I 
visited all stations twice, delivered two hundred and 
seventy sermons or addresses and administered com- 
munion sixty-eight times. Our Church school was kept 
going only by help from outside. 



CHAPTER XXII. 
1 895. 



AFTER our convocation early in January, I spent 
six weeks in the east soliciting funds to support 
our missionaries and school. The drought and herd 



Who Became a Bishop 137 

times had driven me to this. I visited more than twenty 
cities, making addresses and appeals nearly every day 
before congregations, branches of the Woman's Aux- 
iliary, Sunday schools and individuals. I did not like 
that kind of work, but I got the needed money and 
made many friends, some of whom helped our work 
years afterwards. 

From the middle of March to the middle of June I 
was constantly on the road, preaching and confirming 
almost every night. On one of my trips, I was away 
from home five weeks, which was the case once or twice 
each year. For a vacation and change that summer I 
took our four older children and a daughter of one of 
our missionaries up into the mountains in Colorado and 
camped beside the Poudre Cache River. There for 
three weeks we rested and fished for trout, catching all 
we could use in camp. 

Early in September, with the missionary, Rev. Geo. 
A. Beecher, I visited the stations on the North Platte 
River. Starting from Sidney, we drove northwest 
fifty miles, passing on the way through a swarm of 
grasshoppers five miles in extent. They had eaten 
all the prairie grass and a flock of seventy-five hawks 
and a bald eagle were eating the grasshoppers. At 
sunset we came to the Post Office of Silverthorne, kept 
in a sod house of two rooms by the family who had 
invited us to come. That evening we held service in 
a sod school-house near by, having a lamp on our 
desk and a lantern hung from the roof to light the peo- 



138 The Farmer Boy 

pie. After returning to the house, the man requested 
us to baptize him, which we did. Then for an hour 
or more we instructed him, his wife and daughter in 
the fundamental principles of the Christian religion. 
Then the three were confirmed and received the holy 
communion. As the place was off our usual beat, there 
was no certainty of our being there again, hence we 
crowded these functions together, working until after 
midnight. The daughter then went off to another 
ranch where she was working. As there were but two 
rooms and one bed in the house, we divided the bed as 
follows. The man and his wife took the mattress and, 
gave us the springs. We placed the springs on four 
chairs in the kitchen, put under and over us the blankets 
we had brought along and thus spent the rest of the 
night. 

The second night after we came to Bayard and held 
service there. After service a young woman and her 
husband remained sitting on the front seat. I stepped 
down and spoke to them. The woman looked up into 
my face and said, " Mr. Graves, don't you remember 
me)" I could not recall her looks or her name and 
she seemed disappointed and exclaimed, ' ' Why, you 
held me in your arms as a little baby and baptized me." 
That was true and took place over twenty years before 
at Plattsmouth, Nebraska. Now she, her husband and 
father had driven in eight miles to see and hear their 
old pastor. 

After service Mr. Beecher refused to go into the 



Who Became a Bishop 139 

little tavern fearing the insects which were too common 
in such places during warm weather. We then drove 
on five miles by moonlight until we came in sight of a 
windmill where we knew we could get water in the 
morning. We turned out of the road on to the prairie, 
unhitched the horses and tethered them with long ropes 
so they could eat grass. We then took out our roll of 
blankets and spread them on the ground. Mr. Beecher 
on crawling in between the blankets gave a groan as 
something sharp pierced his side. On looking we found 
we had spread our blankets over a thorny cactus half 
buried in the sand. I dug it out with the heel of my 
shoe and we slept peacefully under the open sky. The 
next morning we watered the horses at the windmill 
and got our breakfast in the ranchhouse. 

The latter part of September I went camping with 
the old party from Lake City, Minnesota. We went 
by train and wagon through the forest to Clam Lake, 
Wisconsin, where for twelve days we camped, hunted 
and fished. On the way back I attended the General 
Convention which met that year in my old church, 
Gethsemane, Minneapolis. At that convention the con- 
stitution of the church was thoroughly revised and the 
first bishops elected for Alaska and Kyoto, Japan. 
Before Christmas I had visited again nearly all the 
stations in my district. 



140 The Farmer Boy 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

1 896. 

HP HE problem of keeping a large mission alive and 
* pushing the work in other missions connected with 
it during a vacancy confronts all our frontier bishops. 
Lay-readers can rarely be found for such work and 
clergymen are too expensive and difficult to find. It 
seemed to me that Godly and accomplished women 
might do such work for a while in places where we 
cannot afford to locate a clergyman. Early in this 
year I found such a lady, Miss Bertha Childe, a uni- 
versity graduate and a correspondent of the New York 
Tribune. I gave her such special instructions as I could 
and a lay-reader's license. She was to organize and 
superintend Sunday school, conduct a lay service Sun- 
day afternoons, reading printed sermons or a short 
paper of her own composition, organize and direct a 
ladies' guild, conduct a sewing class for little girls and 
call at regular intervals on every family in the village. 
Miss Childe did this work most acceptably in different 
places for several years until a banker took her to wife. 
I had four other women at different times who under- 
took like work, one of whom came from a deaconess 
training school and whom I set apart as a deaconess. 
The chief difficulty in this experiment has been the lack 
of such well trained women here in the west. There 
must be hundreds of such women in the east who might 



Who Became a Bishop 141 

with some training do a blessed work and keep them- 
selves sweet and attractive for many years. 

In my spring visitations in 1 896 I tried also another 
experiment. That was to drive all around my stations 
with a team of horses instead of taking the cars. I had 
bought a pair of missionary ponies, weighing about 
seven hundred and fifty pounds each, for Rev. Mr. 
Beecher to use in his long string of missions off the rail- 
road. He had now gone to the parish at North Platte, 
so I took the ponies and drove to all my stations except 
a few on the Union Pacific Railroad. Although our 
stations are not near together, averaging about twenty- 
five miles apart, I was able to make one each day ex- 
cept on two or three long stretches and did not miss a 
single appointment. Sometimes I drove fifty and 
even fifty-five miles in a day. Notwithstanding the 
exposure and fatigue, the out-of-door life kept me well 
and strong. One day I came near missing an appoint- 
ment when I had to make twenty-six miles through 
snow, rain, hail, slush, thunder and lightning. At 
times the ponies refused to face the storm. I reached 
the mission at Wood Lake just in time for evening ser- 
vice. Cold and wet I hastened to the school-house. I 
had a good supper, but not until after the service. One 
time I had one hundred and five miles to make between 
Kennedy and Gordon through the unfenced sand-hills. 
I followed trails when they went my way. Much of 
the way my only guide was the compass and my only 
road the grass of the prairie. I forded the Snake 



142 The Farmer Boy 

River where the banks were three feet perpendicular 
on both sides. A part of the harness broke, but the 
ponies pulled me out. I generally found at night some 
ranchman's hut where I was always welcome. One 
of those nights I was entertained by a ranchman whose 
name was Dan Webster. I drove about fifteen hun- 
dred miles that spring and both driver and horses 
came out in good condition. As the railroads in those 
days furnished me with passes, I did not continue the 
practice of driving, but it proved that the thing could 
be done with a good team and would be delightful 
with an automobile. 

In the summer I made a short visit to my college and 
seminary friend, Rev. P. B. Lightner, then rector at 
Manitou Springs, Colorado. In September I went 
camping with Rev. C. H. Plummer, Isaac and William 
Richardson of Lake City, Minnesota. We camped 
again on Clam Lake, Northern Wisconsin. On Sun- 
day we held service in the house of a Swede near by 
and baptized his child. Later in the fall I attended a 
meeting of the House of Bishops in New York and 
visited my oldest son then in Hobart College, Geneva, 
N. Y. On my way home I stopped at the Missionary 
Council in Cincinnati. I quote from my seventh annual 
report as follows: 

" The past year has been somewhat more cheering 
in the Missionary District of The Platte than the two 
previous years of drought and famine. Although the 
crops have been light and the price of our products 



Who Became a Bishop 143 

low, keeping our people poor, yet there has been this 
year no unusual destitution and suffering. People have 
continued to move out of the District, but not in large 
numbers as heretofore. None of our clergy have left 
us. As heretofore our missionaries have had charge of 
large districts with care of from six to fifteen stations. 
This involves travel on their part of from four hundred 
to eight hundred miles a month and absence from home 
much of the time. Yet all are cheerful and stay by 
their work. I do not believe a nobler band of mission- 
aries can be found in the Church than we have in The 
Platte. I want to record their names here: Revs. J. 
M. Bates, W. S. Sayres, L. P. McDonald, H. J. 
Brown, S. A. Potter, G. A. Beecher, R. L. Knox, 
H. E. Robbins, F. Durant, E. D. Irvine, Thomas 
Bakes, L. H. Young, J. Senior, Howard Stoy, R. 
M. Hardman, Richard Whitehouse, W. H. Xanders, 
G. B. Clarke, E. R. Earle, W. W. Wells, A. H. 
Tyrer, J. R. Jenkins, W. H. Frost, J. L. Craig, A. W. 
Bell, Wm. Toole, J. A. Tancock, P. B. Peabody, F. 
D. Graves, G. G. Bennett, A. J. R. Goldsmith, G. L. 
Freebern. Not all of these were with me at this par- 
ticular time, but all of them won spurs in my Dis- 
trict and I should like to give them all crowns. The 
work is done systematically by these men and reported 
every month to the Bishop. On each visitation I spend 
from one to two weeks with each missionary, talking 
over individual cases and difficulties, visiting isolated 
families and considering the possibilities of new open- 
ings. Outside a few of the larger places, the Bishop is 
seen once or twice a year in the home of almost every 
family interested in the Church. 

' Advantage has been taken of the very low price 



144 The Farmer Boy 

of real estate to secure Church property which will 
eventually be a great help in extending the work. At 
Arapahoe the Ladies' Guild bought a house and two 
lots for three hundred dollars, which originally cost 
eight hundred dollars. At Bloomington a Lutheran 
church was bought for three hundred and fifty dollars, 
which cost at first eighteen hundred dollars. At Mc- 
Cook two lots beside the church were secured 
and a house bought and moved on to them for a rectory. 
At O'Neill the ladies have secured five lots in the cen- 
tral part of the town and fitted up an old office building 
for a chapel. I also secured lots in other places. 
Growing confidence in our work and careful use of our 
means have induced such voluntary gifts from the east 
as have enabled us to sustain the work without going 
away to solicit funds." 



CHAPTER XXIV. 
1897. 

THE first of January I accepted temporary charge 
of the Missionary District of Northern California. 
Bishop Wingfield who had been bishop of that Dis- 
trict for many years had received a stroke of paralysis 
which crippled him for work and confined him to his 
house. The care of the District therefore fell to the 
Presiding Bishop of the Church, Bishop Williams of 
Connecticut. He appointed me to the work in addition 



Who Became a Bishop 145 

to that of my own District. I first conferred with 
Bishop Nichols of San Francisco and Bishop Leonard 
of Salt Lake who had been doing some work in 
Northern California. I also went to see Bishop Wing- 
field who warmly welcomed me to the task. I then 
made a thorough visitation of the District confirming 
candidates, encouraging the clergy and securing some 
new men for the work. This kept me busy until the 
5th of April when I returned to Nebraska. 

On Easter Tuesday Mrs. Graves and myself cele- 
brated the twentieth anniversary of our wedding, in- 
viting in twenty friends for the evening. Two boys, 
David and Paul, had been born to us in Nebraska. 
On the fourth of May I confirmed a remarkable class 
of twenty-three in the little village of Culbertson. It 
came about in this way. The Methodists and Pres- 
byterians had united for a revival and employed a noted 
lay evangelist. He succeeded in stirring up the whole 
town in religious matters. We had been holding ser- 
vices there once a month by a lay-reader from Mc- 
Cook. The leading business men talked over the matter 
among themselves and agreed to unite with the Epis- 
copal Church. They sought instruction from our lay - 
reader who was a seminary graduate and thoroughly 
competent. The day of the confirmation I gave the 
Holy Communion to twenty-seven persons in Culbert- 
son. To show the difficulties of our western work I 
would state that ten years later only one communicant 
was left in Culbertson, all the others having moved 



146 The Farmer Boy 

away. Two days after the confirmation in Culbertson I 
gave communion to twenty-eight in Trenton. Ten years 
later there were only four left there. I could name a 
dozen places in my District which have had a some- 
what similar experience. On the twenty-first of May 
I preached to eighty people in the school-house at 
Wood Lake, that number being more than the entire 
inhabitants of the village, some coming miles from the 
country. I could recall many experiences of that kind. 

During July I attended the sessions of the Lambeth 
Conference in London, England. About one hun- 
dred bishops were present from all parts of the 
world. I arrived there the day it opened and started 
for home the day it closed, hurrying back to my double 
charge in California and Nebraska. During the brief 
intermission between sessions of the conference I visited 
five families in England who had relatives in my Dis- 
trict. 

On my return I made many visitations in The Platte 
and started September 29th with my wife for Northern 
California. I was busy there until Christmas, my wife 
going to most of the places with me, meeting with the 
various ladies' guilds and organizing a number of 
branches of the Woman's Auxiliary to the Board of 
Missions. Among other things I delivered a course of 
lectures to the divinity students at San Mateo. 



Who Became a Bishop 147 

CHAPTER XXV. 
1 898. 

I BEGAN my visitations this year in January so as 
to get through in time to go to California in the 
spring. April 4th I was at Fort Robinson just 
before the breaking out of the war with Spain and 
addressed the soldiers on the subject of the war which 
seemed imminent. After service Colonel Hamilton 
who entertained me said: " V/e have practiced loading 
our horses on the cars and are ready to start for the war 
at a moment's notice, but I think the difficulty will be 
fixed up in some way and that there will be no war." 
Two days after that his regiment was off for the war 
and in three months he died a hero at the battle of San 
Juan Hill. 

On the third of May I started for Northern Cali- 
fornia, visiting Bishop Leonard and his institutions at 
Salt Lake on the way. Before the end of June I visited 
thirty-three places, started several news missions where 
churches were built soon after and closed up my work 
as far as the District of Northern California was con- 
cerned. In the autumn, Bishop Wingfield having died, 
the General Convention elected Rev. W. H. Moreland 
bishop of Northern California. This relieved me of 
that additional work. With my family we spent two 
months of the summer at Evergreen, Colorado, in the 
mountains west of Denver. I held services every Sun- 



148 The Farmer Boy 

day in the little chapel there. We caught many trout 
and were greatly refreshed by the rest and change. 

The last of August I accepted an invitation from 
Bishop Hare to visit his convocation of Sioux, or Da- 
kota, Indians, held at Corn Creek, fifty miles north of 
my District. With the Bishop of Oklahoma and 
Bishop Hare we drove the fifty miles in a wagon reach- 
ing Corn Creek in time for the sunset service. Some 
two hundred Indians and the squaws by themselves in 
bright colored blankets gathered in a large circle on 
the open prairie. As the sun went down a few prayers 
were said then Bishop Brooke and myself addressed 
the Indians. Our speeches were interpreted sentence 
by sentence. Bishop Brooke told them of the hot 
climate in Oklahoma and I said I had seen many of 
them at the railroad stations in my District. The next 
morning Bishop Hare told us the Indians had a long 
Indian name for each of us, my name meaning ' The 
Railroad Bishop " and Bishop Brooke's name * The 
Bishop from the Hot Place." Sunday morning I 
preached to the Indians under a booth covered with 
evergreens brought from several miles away. At the 
sunset service Bishop Brooke preached and that even- 
ing fifty-one Indians were confirmed by Bishop Hare. 
The fifty tepees, or Indian tents, were pitched in a 
large semicircle and all made on the open prairie a most 
picturesque and beautiful sight. The Indians had come 
in from a hundred miles east and west and remained 
about three days. The business meetings of the con- 



Who Became a Bishop 149 

vocation were very interesting. The different branches 
of the Woman's Auxiliary had brought their annual 
offerings in fancy buckskin purses amounting to about 
two hundred dollars. One hour after the last service 
the tepees had all disappeared and nothing but distant 
clouds of dust on the different roads told us of our de- 
parting friends. At 6:00 P. M. we started to drive 
fifty miles to Gordon to catch the two o'clock night 
train. Fast driving brought us in sight of Gordon when 
a hot box and groaning wheel stopped us until we saw 
our train in the distance, the only one in twenty-four 
hours, pass by without us. 

Early in September I camped for eight days with the 
old Minnesota party on an island in the Mississippi 
River near Wabasha, Minnesota. We got some fish 
and less game, but saw the big steamers with their 
searchlights at night and great rafts of logs pass by. 

In October I attended the General Convention in 
Washington, D. C. That convention added the eastern 
half of the great state of Wyoming to my District thus 
adding fifty thousand square miles and doubling my 
territory. The name of my District was then changed 
from " The Platte " to " Laramie " as there happened 
to be a cathedral building in Laramie, Wyoming. 
While in the east I visited a number of my good helpers, 
not to solicit funds at that time, as gifts came from them 
either spontaneously or in answer to letters, but my ob- 
ject was to let them see my face and realize more fully 
the character of our work. On my return I finished 



150 The Farmer Boy 

visiting the stations in Nebraska. My work that year 
involved travel to the extent of twenty-five thousand 
miles. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

1899. 

/^N the first day of January I was in the cathedral at 
^■^ Laramie to take charge of my part of Wyoming. 
The cathedral was barely finished. There were no 
furnaces in it and the stoves would not bring the tem- 
perature above forty degrees. There were fifty-five 
people present in furs and overcoats to welcome their 
new bishop. There was a debt of twenty thousand 
dollars on the cathedral, the people of Laramie were 
paying about three hundred and fifty dollars a year 
toward the support of their pastor and the Board of 
Missions was paying him as arch-deacon five hundred 
dollars more. I found twenty-three thousand five hun- 
dred dollars in debts on all the churches or rectories 
in eastern Wyoming. In fact all the churches except 
two were loaded with debt and the one at Sundance 
was sold by auction on the mortgage. Some of the 
clergy had followed Bishop Talbot to Pennsylvania 
and altogether the outlook was dreary and discouraging. 
I presently succeeded in getting some good men into 
that part of the District. The people took hold with 



Who Became a Bishop 151 

me and in three years we had every dollar of the debts 
paid. Bishop Talbot secured about eight thousand 
dollars on the cathedral debt. The rest was secured 
by me writing to friends in the east and from our own 
people. In the smaller places I offered to raise a dollar 
and in some cases two dollars for every dollar the 
people would raise. They all took hold bravely and 
soon the trouble of debts was over. To help raise the 
needed money I made visitations for a month in Ohio 
for Bishop Leonard who gave two hundred and fifty 
dollars for that work. The cold weather in Ohio was 
down to zero most of the time, there were but two 
sunny days and I became worn out and sick. The 
first of March I began my own visitations and kept 
steadily at them until the middle of June, riding hun- 
dreds of miles in stages in Wyoming.. 

The middle of June, the pastor having left the cathe- 
dral at Laramie, I went there myself and took charge 
of the work. I had a deacon with me, Rev. Wm. 
Toole, and we set to work to put things in better shape. 
Mr. Toole began canvassing the tov/n street by street 
calling at every house and making a record of what he 
found. I followed a few days later calling at those 
places where we thought the people or their children 
accessible to the church or Sunday school. I made a 
complete parish register of all families and ages of the 
children who were at all connected with the parish. 
We also made a complete call book for the succeeding 
Dean arranged by street and number. We made many 



152 The Farmer Boy 

repairs with our own hands on St. Matthew's Hall and 
the cathedral. With the help of the Ladies' Guild we 
secured two large furnaces and set them in the base- 
ment of the cathedral. The new Dean, Rev. James 
Cope from Santa Rosa, California, relieved us the 
middle of August and began the great work of building 
up the cathedral congregation into a self-supporting and 
self-respecting parish. This with his helpful wife who 
acted as organist and choir trainer he succeeded in 
doing in the next four years. 

I sent Rev. Mr. Toole to plant a string of new 
missions in the Little Snake Valley. This was an irri- 
gated valley seventy miles south of the Union Pacific 
Railroad along the Wyoming and Colorado boundary 
line. An Irish ranchman there, Mr. J. Cambreth Kane, 
had already started a Sunday school and had done 
some lay reading. A year before this Bishop Talbot 
had sent a divinity student there who became a Meth- 
odist thinking he would obtain a better salary. The 
people soon fell away from him and the field was left 
to us. Mr. Toole with the help of Mr. Kane opened 
five mission stations stretching fifty miles along the 
valley. Some of these were in Colorado. The next 
year Rev. Alfred A. Gilman, another deacon, took up 
the work there and was instrumental in building a 
church at Baggs and also a church and log rectory at 
Dixon. For ten years we held that field without the 
competition of any other religious body. I visited it 
every summer spending two weeks confirming the candi- 



Who Became a Bishop 153 

dates, visiting the ranchmen in their homes and fishing 
for trout as well as for men. Snake River was what 
was known in the ranching country as the " Dead 
Line." North of it were the sheep ranges and south of 
it the cattle and horse ranges. If the sheep herders 
encroached on the cattle country their sheep were 
likely to be killed. One time a band of cow-boys 
came upon such a sheep herder, tied him to his camp 
wagon, sawed the spokes out of the wheels and with 
them beat the brains out of a hundred sheep or more. 
This seems like cruel justice, but it was necessary as 
the sheep spoiled the grazing for cattle. Cattle men 
had been ruined and driven out of whole counties by 
the sheep. These vast stretches of half desert country 
belonged to the United States, but were then freely used 
by the ranchmen. 

The latter part of August and early in September I 
made visitations in Nebraska. I then joined the Minne- 
sota camping party for a short vacation. We took our 
boat by wagon thirty-five miles from the railroad to 
Lake Itasca, the source of the Mississippi River. We 
spent two days exploring around the lake and fishing. 
We followed up the stream that comes into the lake to 
near the large spring where it rises. There we could 
easily step across the stream. I have sometimes shocked 
people by soberly asserting that when I was younger 
and more active I had stepped across the Mississippi 
River at a single step. For two weeks we floated 
and rowed down the river, camping each night upon 



154 The Farmer Boy 

the shore. We passed through four or five lakes 
and got plenty of fish and duck for our table. In 
October I attended the Missionary Council in St. 
Louis and after that made visitations over the most 
of my District. At the end of the year I had 
preached two hundred and seventy-nine times and trav- 
eled about twenty thousand miles. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 
1900. 

ALL the spring I was constantly on the road making 
visitations until July 4th. On that day I was 
in Sheridan, Wyoming, and gave up the day to the 
national celebration. A hundred or more Crow Indians 
had been invited down from their reservation and prom- 
ised a feast if they would take part in the celebration. 
A sham battle was planned between the Indians and 
a company of the militia helped by a company of reg- 
ular soldiers. It was to be a representation of the battle 
in which General Custer, not far from Sheridan, and 
all his soldiers had been massacred. The Indians at 
Sheridan were camped in some trees on a small stream. 
We first saw the company of regulars marching in from 
a mile away. As they drew near a hill opposite the 
town, out of the grove came the hundred Indians on 
their ponies in feathers and paint and giving horrible 



Who Became a Bishop 155 

war whoops. They strung out in single file and gal- 
loped in a large circle around the soldiers. The firing 
with blank cartridges began and one soldier after an- 
other went down. Occasionally an Indian warrior fell 
from his horse. Round and round they rode until all 
the soldiers were down. Then out came the squaws 
with their scalping knives and went through the form of 
scalping the soldiers. Later the military company ap- 
peared on a side hill behind a temporary fortification. 
Again the Indians came whooping out, but were finally 
driven back by the militia. These conflicts as seen from 
a distance were picturesque and thrilling. 

The rest of July and August I worked with my son 
Eliot fitting up St. Matthew's Hall, Laramie, as a 
Church boarding home for girls attending the state uni- 
versity located at Laramie. Bishop Talbot had had 
a school in this building which belonged to the Church, 
but it was too near the state university to succeed. Mrs. 
Eva. S. Cochran of Yonkers, New York, who had orig- 
inally bought the building for a school, now gave me 
one thousand dollars to repair the building and furnish 
it. We ran this boarding home for two years, but the 
number of girls attending the university decreased so 
rapidly that we had not enough boarders to keep the 
hall running. 

In September I heard of a legacy of thirty-six thou- 
sand dollars, left to our Kearney Military Academy 
by the late Felix R. Brunot of Allegheny City, Penn- 
sylvania. This greatly rejoiced my heart. We had 



156 The Farmer Boy 

had a long hard struggle to keep that Church school 
going and now the interest on this endowment would 
sustain it in the bad times. The new principal, Mr. 
Harry N. Russell, took full charge under me and built 
up the school into a blessed success. 

The following account of a visit to the mission sta- 
tions on the Little Snake River will be of interest. 

A TYPICAL MISSIONARY TRIP. 

' On the seventh cf August the Rev. Geo. A. 
Beecher and myself were met at Rawlins, my most 
western station on the railroad, by Mr. J. C. Kane 
from the Snake River Valley in Southern Wyoming. 
At noon we took our dinner at a ranch house, the only 
house on the road for fifty miles. After dinner our 
road ascended the great divide of the continent. For 
the next twenty miles we drove along the summit of 
this divide. All the streams on our right found their 
way into the Pacific Ocean and those on our left into 
the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic. Our road lay 
nine thousand feet above the sea. While there were 
higher peaks to the right and left of us they really be- 
longed to the Pacific or Atlantic slope, while we were 
on the very backbone of the continent. As we grad- 
ually came down into the valley of the Savory we 
came upon a covey of sage chickens and Mr. Beecher 
and I secured a dozen of these with our guns for our 
larder. At night we reached a sheep camp under the 
management of a Churchman. He made us comfort- 



Who Became a Bishop 157 

able for the night, giving me his own bed in the sheep 
wagon. 

The next morning we gathered some more sage chick- 
ens and some trout and then drove on twenty-five miles 
farther to Mr. Kane's ranch on Snake River near 
Dixon. We called at several ranches in the valley noti- 
fying them of services on Sunday. The next three days 
I spent with the missionary, Rev. Wm. Toole, calling 
on all the people up and down the valley for a dozen 
miles. When Mr. Toole went to the valley a year be- 
fore there w T as but one communicant of the Church 
within fifty miles and that was Mr. Kane our licensed 
lay-reader. There was no other minister or service of 
any kind in all that region. Methodists, Campbellites 
and all sorts attended our services and responded heart- 
ily. They were very shy at first, but have all come to 
respect and like the faithful young missionary. One 
Sunday Mr. Toole is at the stations up the river and 
Mr. Kane at those below and the next Sunday he goes 
down and Mr. Kane up the river. At first no money 
was asked, only collections taken, but now nearly all 
subscribe liberally. On Sunday I went with Mr. Toole 
to Baggs and Dixon while the Rev. Mr. Beecher went 
with Mr. Kane to Battle Creek and Savory. I con- 
firmed one at Baggs in the morning and three at Dixon 
in the evening. As Mr. Beecher's service at Savory 
was in the afternoon we all came together in the even- 
ing and had a rousing service with the school-house 
full of people. After confirmation we gave the com- 



158 The Farmer Boy 

munion to the newly confirmed who had come several 
miles to the service. As the missionary was only in 
deacon's orders this was the first communion service 
ever held within seventy miles of the spot. 

The next two days we camped and fished near the 
mouth of Battle Creek and then drove to Clayton's 
sheep-camp again. This was well up in the mountains 
so that night, the fifteenth of August, water froze in the 
sheep wagon where I slept. The next day we drove 
fifty miles east over the Sierra Madre Mountains to 
Saratoga in the North Platte Valley. There I con- 
firmed a class of four for our venerable missionary, Rev. 
Dr. R. E. G. Huntington, then eighty years of age. 
From there in the stage and much dust for thirty miles 
we came to the railroad at Fort Steele. The Rev. Mr. 
Toole came with us to Laramie where he was advanced 
to the priesthood and thence returned to his lonely 
work for another year. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 
1901. 

IN May of this year I made fourteen visitations for 
the Diocese of Colorado as Bishop Spalding had 
died and the diocese was vacant. In the summer I 
made two long trips with horse and buggy to most of 
the small towns within a hundred miles of Kearney 



Who Became a Bishop 159 

looking up students for our school. Under the former 
principal it had run down very much. I also spent two 
cr three weeks working with my own hands repairing 
the buildings of the school. Our District Convocation 
was held August eleventh at Laramie and at that time 
the cathedral was consecrated, the debt having been all 
paid. Bishop Talbot, formerly of Wyoming, came out 
and preached the sermon. After that Mr. Iverson, of 
Laramie, took Bishop Talbot and myself up the La- 
ramie River where for two days we visited and fished 
for trout together. 

In September and October Mrs. Graves and myself 
attended the General Convention in San Francisco. On 
our way out we visited Bishop Brewer of Montana, 
Bishop Wells at Spokane, Dr. Llwyd at Seattle and 
Bishop Morris at Portland. It was a great satisfaction 
to see the work and compare notes with these pioneers 
of the farther west. At the General Convention the 
constitution of the Church was still further revised and 
five or six missionary bishops elected. We returned by 
Southern California where we again visited friend:. 
The rest of the year I was making visitations in my own 
District. To show the character of such visitations I 
quote from my old diary : 

M November 24th, 1901 . At Valentine, Nebraska. 
Address Sunday school A. M. and preach to fifty 
people. Confirm four and address them. Collections 
for our missions in the District, three dollars and sixty 
cents. Preach again in the evening to twenty-five. 



160 The Farmer Boy 

" November 25 th. A. M. Make calls in Valen- 
tine and see about exchanging Church lots in Cody. 
P. M. On to Wood Lake. Preach to fifty in the 
school-house and confirm two. Collection, one dollar 
and forty-five cents. 

' November 26th. To Johnstown. Write ten 
letters A. M. Call all around with Mr. Bates. P. M. 
Evening preach in the Methodist Church, confirm 
three and address them. Collection two dollars. 

' November 27th. Train to Ainsworth. Write 
ten letters A. M. Make calls P. M. Preach to 
fifty in the Congregational church in the evening. Col- 
lection four dollars and three cents. Gift from Ladies' 
Guild for our missions, five dollars. 

'* November 28th. Thanksgiving Day. In Bas- 
sett. Service A. M. in the school-house. Preach on 
thanksgiving and confirmation to forty people. Confirm 
nine and address them. Collection, six dollars and 
twelve cents. P. M. Watch a shooting match and 
make many calls. Write up my register of families 
in Mr. Bates' stations. 

" November 29th. To Atkinson making calls 
there all day. Evening service in Methodist church. 
Sixty present. Preach, confirm one and administer 
communion to five. Collection two dollars and seventy- 
five cents. 

1 November 30th. A. M. Confirm one in private at 
Atkinson and then take train to Ewing. Make calls 
all P. M. Evening preach in our chapel to fifty and 



Who Became a Bishop 161 

confirm one. Collection, five dollars and fifty-two 
cents. 

' Sunday, December 1st. At O'Neill. Preach morn- 
ing and evening, confirm two and address them. Col- 
lection, four dollars and forty-five cents. Call all 
around P. M. 

1 December 2nd. To Inman. Write eleven letters 
A. M. Calls P. M. Evening preach in Methodist 
church to forty-five. Collection, eighty-six cents. 

1 December 3rd. On train all day and evening get- 
ting home." 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

1 902. 

MADE a few visitations early in January, but 
* was sick with nervous dyspepsia. On January 
fifteenth I started out for rest and change. I first 
visited my life-long friend, Philip Potter, in Omaha. 
He and his good wife put me to bed for a week and 
entertained me for several days after. Feeling the 
need of out-of-door life and exercise I started for the 
south, visiting some friends in Missouri and Arkansas 
on the way. I finally stopped at De Queen in south- 
western Arkansas with a truck gardener. For two 
weeks I hunted rabbits, ducks and quails every day 
and rested. I gained strength and appetite rapidly 



162 The Farmer Boy 

though the weather was dark and damp which brought 
on the asthma at night. I returned the latter part of 
February and kept steadily at my visitations until July. 
The middle of May I took a flying trip to Cincinnati to 
attend a meeting of the House of Bishops at which we 
elected bishops for Salina, Honolulu and Porto Rico. 
In June I visited the missions in Southern Wyoming 
and drove with the missionaries five hundred miles 
across deserts and over mountains. We held some 
services in northern Colorado in places almost inaccess- 
ible from Denver. On these journeys I had to carry 
a jug of pure water as the alkali water from the ranch- 
men's wells always made me ill. 

After our annual convocation was over, early in Sep- 
tember, I joined the Minnesota party, to which Rev. 
Irving P. Johnson was now added, in a camp on Black 
Lake and Three Island Lake in northern Minnesota, 
for nearly three weeks. While camping here we ex- 
plored an Island in Big Turtle Lake which we and 
others afterwards bought for a permanent camping 
place. We named the island Mekenock which is the 
Indian word for Turtle Island. Later on cottages were 
built there by members of the company and it became a 
regular summer and autumn camping ground. On my 
way home I visited many friends in my old parish of 
Gethsemane, Minneapolis. The remainder of the year 
was given to visitations in my large District. 

In my visitations I always tried to adapt myself to 
the people and conditions I found. To illustrate this 



Who Became a Bishop 163 

I relate the following incident. A Church woman in 
Atkinson had several times declined to entertain me 
because she felt she could not do it as she thought a 
bishop should be entertained. At last she was per- 
suaded to try it. After it was over the lady who per- 
suaded her to try it asked her how she got along with 
the Bishop? She answered, M Oh, fine in every way. 
Why the Bishop is as common as an old shoe." She 
may not thought of it as a compliment, but I consider 
it the highest one she could have paid me. She was 
certainly pleased with my visit and was anxious to 
have me again. Speaking of compliments I rarely 
received them on my preaching for some reason. There 
were two I remember and highly prize. One was from 
a boy eleven years old. He told a friend that he could 
understand every word in Mr. Graves' sermon. The 
other was from an able clergyman eighty years old for 
whom I had preached many times. He said, " I have 
never heard you preach an ordinaire sermon." I do not 
think my sermons were such as would call forth flatter- 
ing remarks, but I am assured that they have set many 
people thinking seriously and deeply. 

During 1902 our Church school made great prog- 
ress so that for the first time we had a surplus over 
expenses to use in making improvements. The building 
up of this school had been a long, hard struggle with 
much anxiety and toil. 



164 The Farmer Boy 

CHAPTER XXX. 

1 903. 

C ARLY in January I took my wife and oldest 
*—' daughter to Gainesville, Florida, where we re- 
mained six weeks to escape the intense cold of the win- 
ter. On the first of March I started out on my visita- 
tions, but before reaching the first mission our train 
was wedged into a snow bank and could move neither 
way. I joined a squad of passengers and trainmen 
with shovels to dig ourselves loose, but without success. 
We had to wait about eight hours before the snow plow 
on another engine came to release us. We found a 
large basket of bread and a can of cream in the express 
car and appeased our hunger. I missed my appoint- 
ment that night, something which has not happened 
once a year in all my episcopate. In every case, the 
cause was being snowed up on the train or a break- 
down of the locomotive. 

I was busy with visitations until the middle of July. 
I then prepared my annual address to our convoca- 
tion and fourteenth annual report to the Board of 
Missions. I insert here an account of a missionary 
trip among the Rocky Mountains, which may be of 
interest : 

" On the twenty-fourth of June, the Bishop with 
his son, just graduated from Theological Seminary, 
were met by Dean Cope at Laramie. With his own 



Who Became a Bishop 165 

team the Dean drove us up the Laramie River twenty 
miles, then climbing to the top of the ridge drove us 
twenty miles more along the summit of the Medicine 
Bow Range. At sunset we came to a road ranch kept 
by a Frenchman where we spent the night. The next 
morning we descended into the valley of the North 
Platte River, called the North Park of Colorado. At 
noon we dined on crackers and caught a few trout in 
the Platte. All the afternoon we drove west across 
the Park. Toward evening we passed through the 
mining camp of Pearl, Colorado. We then turned 
north and climbed over a spur of the Rockies. Not 
reaching a ranch house, as we had hoped, we decided 
to camp on the mountain by Big Creek. Before dark 
we had caught a nice string of mountain trout. We 
had brought no blankets and were not prepared for 
camping, but were prepared as always to make the 
best of the situation. The seats were taken out and the 
curtains of the mountain wagon were put up. The 
bed of the wagon was filled with pine boughs and a bag 
of grain made a pillow for the Bishop and his son. 
The Dean put the seat cushion under the wagon for a 
bed and took the only overcoat in the party for a cover- 
ing. The Bishop and his son were soon asleep, but the 
Dean spent the most of the night nursing the fire made 
of such sticks as he could break with his hands from 
the willows and sage brush. The frost was heavy all 
around us and the water pail was frozen over. Still 
we all enjoyed our breakfast of graham crackers and 
trout fried on a piece of tin from an old can. 

' Soon after sunrise we were on our way again, 
climbing another spur of the Rockies. At noon we 
stopped at a stream for lunch, where the Bishop caught 



166 The Farmer Boy 

a few more trout. In the afternoon we passed by the 
mining camp of Grand Encampment and that night we 
stayed at Cocheron's ranch on Cow Creek, where we 
were entertained royally. 

■ The next morning we baptized a grandchild of Mr. 
Cocheron and reached Saratoga by noon. In the 
afternoon the Bishop made calls with Rev. Dr. Hunt- 
ington on all his parishioners. 

' The next day, Sunday, we held services in Sara- 
toga and collected six dollars and thirty-five cents for 
our mission work. Here Rev. Mr. Toole, the mission- 
ary from the Snake River country seventy miles away, 
met the Bishop with his team. After resting over 
Monday, Mr. and Mrs. Toole, the Bishop and his son 
started on their long drive over the continental divide. 
Lunching by the roadside, we reached the little hamlet 
of Battle Lake, ten thousand feet above sea level. 
There we picked up copper ore on the very summit of 
the mountain and walked over acres of snow, some of 
it twenty feet deep. 

The next morning we jolted over nine miles of the 
rockiest road in the country, then ever down into the 
valley of the Little Snake to Dixon. There for several 
days we rested and made calls on the neighboring ranch- 
men. The Glorious Fourth of July we spent in the little 
village of Baggs, watching the races, the contests in 
riding bucking bronchos and other sports peculiar to the 
far west. Our Church ladies at Baggs cleared one 
hundred and forty dollars that day serving refreshments 
to the celebrators. 

'* On Sunday morning we were in Dixon for Sunday 
school, the Bishop teaching a class. In the afternoon, 
at the Savoy school-house, five miles away, we 



Who Became a Bishop 167 

preached to sixty people. In the evening at Dixon 
again we had a congregation of sixty and confirmed a 
class of six, mostly adults. 

1 During the week following we visited the ranch- 
men for thirty miles up and down the valley and two 
or three times filled our ten-pound basket with trout. 

' On the next Sunday we held morning service 
in the little school-house at Battle Creek, into which 
twenty-eight people were crowded. In the afternoon 
we drove twenty-eight miles down the valley to Baggs. 
There we held the opening service in the new brick 
church, without windows or pews, preached to ninety 
people and confirmed a class of two presented by Rev. 
A. A. Gilman. No Christian services of any sort ex- 
cept our own are held in this valley or within seventy 
miles of it. 

w After a day's rest at Dixon, we took the stage 
seventy miles to Rawlins and toward evening heard the 
whistle of the locomotive once more. We had driven 
nearly four hundred miles since leaving the railroad." 

My vacation came in September, when I camped 
with the old Minnesota friends in the woods twenty 
miles north of Duluth, Minnesota. In addition to the 
many ducks for our larder, we shot a young deer and 
secured some moose meat from a logging camp. 

The middle of October I attended an " All America 
Conference of Bishops," held in Washington, District 
of Columbia. Bishops from Canada, the West Indies 
and from all over the United States were present. 
Some important matters were considered, such as the 
attitude of our Church toward Protestant Communions, 



168 The Farmer Boy 

Methods of Work with Negroes and Indians, the 
Proper Method of Transferring Clergymen from 
Canada to the United States and other matters of 
general interest. This meeting was followed by the 
annual Missionary Council. While east, I visited some 
of our friends and helpers in Philadelphia, New York 
and Connecticut. The balance of the year I was busy 
making visitations in my District. For the first fifteen 
years of my episcopate I was at home only about one- 
fifth of the time. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 
1 904. 

THE middle of January I was in Kansas City, at- 
tending the first conference of the Sixth Mission- 
ary Department. From there I visited Bishop Mills- 
paugh and his Church institutions at Topeka, Kansas. 
To break the cold winter, I went on to a truck ranch, 
near El Paso, Texas, staying with a Church family 
there, hunting quails and rabbits for three weeks, and 
began writing this autobiography. By the twentieth of 
February I was at my regular visitations, which kept 
me busy until the first of August. In July, Rev. C. H. 
Plummer, of Lake City, Minnesota, came to me and 
together we visited the Snake River Missions in South- 
ern Wyoming. Between Sundays we camped on the 
banks of the river, caught and ate many mountain trout. 



Who Became a Bishop 169 

On the seventh of August I ordained my oldest son, 
Frederick, to the priesthood. On the twenty-fourth of 
the same month I baptized my first grandchild, son of 
my second son, Eliot. In September I was camping 
for a short time in Minnesota and in October attended 
the General Convention in Boston. In this convention 
missionary bishops were elected for Hankow, Cuba, 
Salt Lake and Mexico. The following extract from 
my report to the Board of Missions will give some idea 
of how the work of our District was coming on : 

' The past year has been a prosperous one for our 
missionary work on the frontier. The winter and early 
spring had fewer storms than the previous year and in 
consequence our services have been more regular and 
congregations better. The number of confirmations and 
other spiritual fruits seem much more abundant. There 
were fewer changes in our staff of clergy, and those 
not until near the end of the fiscal year. 

" CHURCH PROPERTY. 

The property of the Church in this District has in- 
creased in many ways. At Gering, Nebraska, lots 
have been secured and a chapel is being built. At 
Merriman money is in sight to build a chapel. At 
Bassett and Stratton we have secured lots for chapels. 
At Cheyenne, Chadron and Buffalo funds are accumu- 
lating for parish houses. At Baggs windows and pews 
have been put in and the church plastered so it is in 
constant use. At Sidney the side wall and roof of the 
church have been extended to make more room for 



1 70 The Farmer Boy 

the choir and a furnace put under the church. The 
church at Rawlins has been presented with a new pipe 
organ. The repairs on the church at Sundance have 
been completed and also on the chapel at O'Neill. 
About fifteen hundred dollars have been put into im- 
provements on the Kearney Military Academy and, as 
usual, without debt. The rectory at New Castle is 
nearly completed and will soon be occupied by the 
Missionary. At Broken Bow the rectory has been en- 
larged and improved. At Valentine a fine lot for a 
rectory has been promised and a good subscription 
made toward the building. At Alliance and Lexing- 
ton the debts on the rectories have been fully paid. At 
Sheridan and Arapahoe the small debts on the rectories 
have been materially reduced. 

" STATISTICS. 

' Church families in the District, one thousand four 
hundred and ten; whole number of baptized persons, 
four thousand three hundred and fifty-nine ; whole num- 
ber of confirmed persons, two thousand three hundred 
and ninety -five; number receiving communion in last 
year, one thousand six hundred and sixty-eight; bap- 
tisms during the year, adults ninety-three, children two 
hundred and eighty-two, total three hundred and fif- 
teen ; confirmations in the year, two hundred and sixty- 
four; marriages, ninety-four; burials, two hundred and 
ninety-nine; Sunday schools, thirty-two; teachers and 
officers, two hundred and four; pupils, one thousand six 
hundred and forty-nine. 

" OFFICIAL ACTS. 

1 In the last year I have taken part in one hundred 
and sixty-two services; delivered one hundred and 







CO 




a 




> 




.** 






H 


? 


— 




fc 


"* 


55 


OD 


w 




pq 


5 


co 


Q 


J> 


£ 


<! 


< 


ti 


Ph 


3 


o 




hH 


CH 






co 






^ 


pq 


■** 




r k 


i- 






tf 


^ 


-^ 


z 


s 


a 



c 




Who Became a Bishop i 7 f 

ninety- four sermons or addresses; administered com- 
munion thirty-three times; baptized thirteen persons; 
confirmed in the District two hundred and sixty-four; 
married one couple; buried one person; licensed 
twenty-six lay-readers; ordered one deacon; ordained 
one priest; received one priest into the Jurisdiction; 
gave letters dismissory to four clergymen. 

" OUR CHURCH SCHOOL FOR BOYS. 

' The Platte Collegiate Institute, or Kearney Mil- 
itary Academy, has had a most interesting and useful 
year. Over eighty students were enrolled with an 
average attendance of about seventy. The low price 
of two hundred and ten dollars a year has brought 
us many boys from the farms, ranches and small vil- 
lages, who could not attend our higher-priced Church 
schools farther east. We are confident in saying that 
such boys are not only better boys in school, but that 
they give better promise of a career of usefulness here- 
after than the sons of wealthy people. Many of the 
pupils are communicants of the Church, a number are 
confirmed every year and most of the younger ones 
will be in due time. Still a majority of them were not 
attached to our Church on entering the school." 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

1905. 

'"THE middle of January, the Missionary Confer- 

* ence of our Department, the Sixth, met in 

Omaha, at which we had some interesting and spicy 



1 72 The Farmer Boy 

discussions. My visitations went steadily on through 
the spring. The following will illustrate some of our 
trips off the railroad: 

On Sunday morning, May 7th, I began the visita- 
tion of Rev. P. B. Peabody's field, that being the two 
large counties of Crook and Weston in the northeast 
corner of Wyoming. We had communion service in 
the neat wooden church at New Castle Sunday morn- 
ing. This church, with the rectory beside it, stands on 
a hill overlooking the town and the vast plains stretch- 
ing west a hundred miles to the foot of the Big Horn 
Mountains. Immediately on the east of New Castle 
are the Black Hills, extending into South Dakota. 
The little board shack, twelve by fourteen feet, in 
which the bachelor missionaries used to live, is now re- 
placed by a comfortable rectory occupied by the mis- 
sionary's family. 

After dinner at the hospitable home of Mr. and 
Mrs. Baird, Mr. Peabody came with his horse and 
buggy to take me to the mission at Cambria, nine miles 
away. Our road lay up through a deep gorge, down 
which comes a small stream and the railroad leading 
from the coal mines. Arrived in Cambria, which is en- 
tirely a coal camp in the narrow gorge, w r e called on 
those families interested in the Church. At evening 
the little church was filled and four young people were 
presented for confirmation. We were hospitably enter- 
tained by the people over night. 

The next morning the missionary was ready with his 





« S 



O ° 




Who Became a Bishop 1 73 

buggy and we drove on up the gorge and over a high 
divide in the Black Hills. From there we descended 
what is aptly termed Break-Neck Hill. The last time 
I was on this steep, narrow road, a great boulder had 
rolled down into the middle of the way, and it was with 
the greatest difficulty that we got our buggy over and 
past the obstruction. On we drove many miles to a 
lonely ranch nestled in the edge of the hills. Here we 
stopped for dinner and found refined, Church people, 
who most heartily welcomed us tc their home. Again 
we drove on northward over the undulating plains until 
twenty miles from our starting point we came to a 
store and not far away a white school-house in a grove 
of pines. This place was called Horton. Two miles 
farther on we came to the home of Mr. Cleave, where 
we were to stay for the night. 

After supper neighboring people joined us to drive 
back to the school-house for service. It soon began to 
rain and blow and became very dark. The school- 
house was reached and the horses tied under the shelter 
of the pines. A wood pile of pine chunks was found, 
from which we broke splinters and started a fire, for 
it was wet and chilly. Then we tried to light the 
lamps, but found that they had neither chimney nor oil. 
One of the party was sent to the nearest house to bor- 
row a lamp or lantern, but he found the house locked 
up and the people away. There were nine of us, 
counting the clergy, and we determined to have the 
service. The missionary felt his way through the dark- 



I 74 The Farmer Boy 

ness to the cottage organ and announced a familiar 
hymn, which we sang from memory. Then followed 
the Lord's prayer and the twenty-third psalm, which 
we repeated in unison. I lighted a pine splinter at 
the stove and held it while Mr. Peabody read the Gos- 
pel for a lesson. After the creed and evening prayers, 
said from memory in the dark, followed another hymn. 
Then came the sermon, while an occasional flash of 
lightning revealed to my invisible hearers that I was 
making the appropriate gestures. For a collection, 
each one handed me his offering in the dark, and we 
closed with another hymn. 

The next day we drove on twenty-five miles to Sun- 
dance, the county seat of Crook County. Here we 
have a church, which cost sixteen hundred dollars. It 
was lost on the mortgage being sold at auction to 
Romanists for one hundred and fifty dollars and 
finally rescued from them by our people. At six 
o'clock that evening we had a wedding and after that 
service in the church. The next day I took the stage 
forty miles to Moorcroft and Mr. Peabody returned 
as he came. 

The spring visitations having all been made, on the 
Fourth of July my two younger sons, David and Paul, 
Rev. J. L. Craig and wife and several others started 
from Casper, Wyoming, for a long camping drive four 
hundred miles through the Big Horn Basin to the Yel- 
lowstone Park. We visited the famous Hot Springs at 
Thermopolis, spending Sunday there and giving them 



Who Became a Bishop 1 75 

a service. We had a large baggage wagon drawn by 
four horses and a spring wagon with two horses. Five 
of the party were on horseback. We made about thirty 
miles a day, camping at night by some stream. We 
carried water in kegs, as many of the streams were so 
strong with alkali that even the horses would not drink 
from them. We passed by post offices once in thirty 
or forty miles, but no villages until we reached Cody, 
two hundred miles from Casper. Up to that point the 
roads had been very rough, cut up by the heavy wagons 
hauling wool to the railroad at Casper. There would 
be four or five wagons, heavily loaded, fastened to- 
gether and in front of them ten or twelve spams of horses 
with one or two drivers. 

After passing Cody we found the United States 
Government road very fine to the Park. While camp- 
ing over Sunday by the Shoshone River one hundred 
miles from the Park, I was taken with an intense agony 
in the stomach and for ten hours had to fairly gasp for 
breath. There was no physician or hotel within a 
hundred miles. After waiting for me two days, they 
placed me on an air bed in the bottom of the spring 
wagon and moved on about fifteen miles a day. We 
at last came to the edge of the Park and a large hotel, 
but the doctor who happened to be there had no medi- 
cines. After viewing the falls and canon of the Yel- 
lowstone River, we moved on through the Park, by 
the Mud Springs and the Norris Geyser Basin to Mam- 
moth Hot Springs. There we found an army surgeon, 



1 76 The Farmer Boy 

who came to my relief. I was placed in the hotel, 
under the kind care and hospitality of Bishop Nichols 
of California, who was spending his vacation there. 
The rest of the party went on through the south part 
of the Park, by the great geysers, Jackson's Hole, the 
Wind River and Lander back to Casper. After two 
weeks at the hotel, during which I gained very slowly, 
I started for home by the stage and train. I was very 
sick all the way. I had to change cars and wait at 
Grand Island, forty miles from my home. I managed 
to get to the house of my good friend, Dr. H. D. Boy- 
den, who put me to bed in his house and telephoned to 
my daughter, Gertrude, to come. Under his skillful 
treatment I gained rapidly and was able to get home in 
a week. Since that breakdown, I have never been as 
strong and have had to take the greatest care of my 
health and diet. Still, with the illness which came 
then in my vacation and since up to 1911, I have never 
lost a single appointment as bishop on account of sick- 
ness. In fact, I have lost only three Sunday services 
on account of sickness in a ministry of over forty years. 
While this strenuous camping trip did help to break 
me down, I believe the many other camps and out-of- 
door life have helped greatly to maintain my health and 
strength through a long and arduous ministry. 

After this illness, I regained my strength slowly, but 
was able to make my fall visitations. I thought it best 
to spend the following winter in the south, as the cold 
weather was a strain on my nervous system. Accord- 



Who Became a Bishop 1 11 

ingly, early in December, with my wife and daughters 
we settled in Bradentown, Florida. For three months 
I had charge of the mission there under Bishop Gray. 
I prepared a class for confirmation, confirmed them and 
made many good friends. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

1906. 

[ N February of this year I made an interesting trip 
* from Bardentown to Fort Myers, then up the Ca- 
loosahatchee River to and across Lake Okeechobee on 
a small steamer. For the first fifteen miles the banks 
were low and marshy. Then for many miles the banks 
were high and orange groves were on either side. As 
I stood on the front deck with my rifle the Captain 
called my attention to a good-sized alligator sleeping 
on the bank. I aimed at his eye and fired. The bullet 
struck him just below the eye and passed through his 
brain to the skin on the other side of his head. We 
lassoed him with a rope and drew him on board. He 
was as dead as a bullet could make him, but for six or 
eight hours he would squirm when touched. I saved 
his skin as a trophy. 

At some distance from the river we could see camps 
of the Seminole Indians. The upper part of the river 
was marshy and passed through shallow lakes until we 



1 78 The Farmer Boy 

came to the big lake. Off to the south of the lake the 
everglades extended as far as the eye could reach and 
much farther. We crossed Lake Okeechobee and 
ascended a crooked river for six miles, where there was 
a store and a small settlement. On our return we 
secured a supply of fish from fishermen on the lake. 
During this winter I wrote the earlier portion of these 
memoirs. The latter part of March I returned to my 
own District and to my spring visitations. 

During the summer I had another interesting trip to 
the missions of the Snake River country in southern 
Wyoming. After a whole day and night on the train 
from my home at Kearney, Nebraska, I met, at Raw- 
lins, Wyoming, July 12, 1906, Rev. W. H. Frost, our 
missionary at Alliance. We were out for a mission- 
ary trip and a vacation combined. The next day we 
rode in the stage seventy miles across the desert to the 
village of Baggs on the Little Snake River. After 
eating supper there and making five calls on our peo- 
ple with the missionary, Rev. Wm. Toole, he drove us 
eight miles farther to Kane's Ranch, where we were 
entertained and rested the next day. The fifteenth 
being Sunday, Mr. Toole drove Mr. Frost six miles 
up the river to Savory school-house, where they had a 
fine service, Mr. Frost preaching the sermon. Mr. 
and Mrs. Kane drove me eight miles down the river 
to Baggs, where we had ninety people crowded into 
our little brick chapel. I preached and nine received 
the communion. On Monday Mr. Frost, who was an 



Who Became a Bishop 1 79 

enthusiastic fisherman, and myself drove fifteen miles 
up the river to Slater in the edge of Colorado. The 
water was too high for good fishing, so we got only 
five trout. While fishing I looked up the river just in 
time to see Mr. Frost swept from the rapids by the swift 
current into a deep hole. For some time nothing but 
the top of his hat and fish pole were seen above the 
water. I was greatly frightened and ran with all my 
might to his rescue. When I tore through the bushes to 
the bank, he was coming up slowly out of the water, 
his rod still in one hand and the stub of a cigar in his 
mouth. I asked him if his cigar had gone out, where- 
upon we both had a good laugh. He caught a bad 
cold from this dipping, so he was not well all the rest 
of the trip. 

The next day I drove with Mr. Toole twenty miles 
up Savory Creek and called on the families of eight 
ranchmen. On Wednesday Mr. Frost and myself 
were driven eighteen miles up the river and pitched 
our tent under Battle Mountain. There we camped 
and fished the rest of the week, getting from twelve to 
twenty-five trout each evening, thus supplying the 
neighbors and ourselves with plenty of fish. 

On Sunday, the twenty-second, Mr. Kane drove 
Mr. Frost to Baggs for service, while Mr. Toole and 
myself held service in the Slater school-house in the 
morning, where I preached to twenty-five people. In 
the afternoon I preached again to fifty people in the 
Savory school-house. In the evening we were all to- 



180 The Farmer Boy 

gether in the Dixon church and Mr. Frost preached a 
rousing sermon. 

During that week we were in camp again near Bat- 
tle Mountain, Mr. Kane and his good wife being with 
us. On Sunday morning we held service in the little 
school-house at Battle Creek, which was crowded with 
twenty people. I talked to them on the text, M Fear 
not, little flock, it is the Father's good pleasure to give 
you the kingdom," after which Mr. Frost preached 
them a sermon. In such places the people would 
gladly sit and listen to two or three sermons at one 
service, so rarely do they hear preaching. As Mr. 
Kane and his wife were anxious to drive with us over 
the continental divide to Saratoga, we started that after- 
noon and drove up the river to Honold's Ranch, the 
last of our Church families in that direction. That 
night, Mr. Frost was very ill with vomiting and high 
fever. We thought he must have mountain fever and 
we had to remain with him the next day. As he was 
much better on Tuesday, we drove on over two spurs 
of the Rockies and up a long gorge to Columbine in 
Colorado, where we spent the night. We had intended 
to go to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, but as it rained 
the next forenoon, we had to give that up. We then 
drove on sixteen miles to the Elkhorn Mine in the 
heart of the mountains. We spent the night in the log 
huts of the miners. We found here an English Church 
woman who had not been inside a church for years. 

On Thursday we drove twelve miles over the top 



Who Became a Bishop 181 

of the Rockies ten thousand feet above sea level. The 
road was very rough and we all had to walk down the 
steep mountain road. I was becoming worn out and 
Mr. Frost was sick again and suffered much that night. 
We spent the night in a camp of men who were getting 
out ties for the railroad to float down the Encampment 
River in the spring. They were very kind to us. Al- 
though two of us were ill, we thought best to drive on 
the next day twenty-seven miles over another high spur 
of the Rockies to Grand Encampment, where we could 
find a doctor. The next day being Saturday, I called 
on all our people and made arrangement ■ for service 
Sunday morning. That morning Mr. Frost was not 
able to get to the service, so I preached to twenty- 
two of our people in a public hall and administered the 
communion. In the afternoon Mr. Kane drove us to 
Saratoga, eighteen miles. As we have no missionary 
in these stations at present, I again preached in the 
little church and administered the communion. The 
next noon Mr. Frost and myself, both sick, took the 
stage twenty-five miles to Walcott on the railroad and 
then the night train five hundred miles toward home. 
We had traveled by stage and wagon over three hun- 
dred miles and by train over a thousand miles. We 
had hoped that the camping and change would do us 
good, but the hard journey made us both sick, so I was 
in bed most of the time for ten days after reaching 
home. 

In September I joined the Minnesota friends in a 



182 The Farmer Boy 

quiet camp at Mekenock, or Turtle Island, in Turtle 
Lake, northern Minnesota. While there, I wrote a his- 
torical sermon, covering the fifty years life of Gethse- 
mane Parish, Minneapolis, in which I was once an 
assistant minister for a year and afterwards rector for 
six years. On October 1 4th I preached that sermon at 
the Jubilee Service. There were other services and fes- 
tivities for a week with great rejoicing. These were 
followed by the meeting of the Missionary Council of 
the Sixth Department, held in Minneapolis. 

This was a crowning year in our Church school for 
boys, The Kearney Military Academy. There were 
over eighty pupils and the old buildings were crowded 
beyond all comfort. On the eighteenth of December 
I presided at the ceremony of laying the corner-stone 
of the new Cochran Hall. Although it was zero 
weather, hundreds of people from far and near assem- 
bled to take part in the ceremony in the open air. A 
procession was formed at the old buildings and marched 
to the foundation of the new one in the following order: 
The Kearney Midway Band, The Knights Templar, 
Blue Lodge Masons, Kearney Militia Company, 
Cadets of the State Normal School, Kearney High 
School, The State Industrial School, and those of the 
Kearney Military Academy. Then followed the of- 
ficials, speakers and the orator of the day. During the 
exercises, I read a brief history of the school, Arch- 
deacon Cope delivered an able address and Wm, Jen- 



Who Became a Bishop 1 83 

mugs Bryan an eloquent oration. I give below the his- 
torical address substantially as delivered by myself: 

THE ORIGIN OF KEARNEY MILITARY ACADEMY. 

On my second visit to Broken Bow, in the year 1 890, 
I had gone to my room for a little rest on Sunday 
afternoon. Soon after, my hostess called me, saying 
that a caller had come to see me. Supposing that some 
prominent Churchman had come to pay his respects 
to the new Bishop, I went down to the parlor. I found 
there a lad about twelve years of age. I was pleased 
that a boy should be so thoughtful as to call on his 
Bishop. After a little talk together, he looked earn- 
estly at me and said, ' When can the Church take 
me? ' I supposed he was thinking of confirmation, so 
I asked him if he knew his catechism and what prepa- 
ration he had had? He replied, "Oh, I don't mean 
that. When can the Church take me and educate me 
for the ministry? ' That question was a poser to me. 
I could not make any promises, but it set me to think- 
ing very seriously. I knew there must be many boys 
like him on the farms and lonely ranches of Nebraska. 

Some time after this a committee of the United 
Brethren Church came to Kearney with the intention 
of starting a school there. They canvassed the town 
to see what could be raised for the purpose. They got 
the promise of twenty-five acres of land in the eastern 
part of town and a promise to put up one large building 
costing seven thousand and five hundred dollars. The 
committee then went to York, Nebraska, and suc- 
ceeded in getting a better offer there, so they declined 
the offer at Kearney. Some of the citizens then came 
to me and asked me to take up with the offer made 



184 The Farmer Boy 

to the United Brethren. I did not see how I could 
do so then, but promised that on my trip east I would 
see if I could get sufficient help to enable me to found 
a school. 

On my first trip east to raise money for our mis- 
sionary work in October of 1890, I was invited to 
address a branch of the Woman's Auxiliary of a 
church in Yonkers, New York. There were about 
thirty ladies present. I told them of our missionary 
work and then I told them the story of the little boy 
at Broken Bow and of the offer made me by the peo- 
ple of Kearney. I said I needed three thousand 
dollars to build a dormitory and with that help I 
thought I could found a Church school. After the 
meeting had adjourned, a lady whom I had never seen 
came to me and said, " I will give you the three thou- 
sand dollars." I almost broke down with emotion. 
Something for which I had pleaded before several 
wealthy congregations in vain was now put in my 
hands without much effort. This lady was Mrs. Eva 
S. Cochran, who became a mother to the school and 
gave to its upbuilding at one time or another about 
thirty-five thousand dollars. 

On my return to Kearney I told the people that I 
was ready to go ahead with the school and directed 
them to go on and put up the large, central building. 
At the same time the contract was let for the dormi- 
tory of forty rooms. It was slow work getting the 
buildings finished and furnished, so we were not able 
to open the school until the September of 1892. At 
first we had both boys and girls in the school and it ran 
in this way for about seven years. Gradually the 
boys increased in number and the girls became fewer 
and fewer until the girls were reluctant to come at all 



Who Became a Bishop 185 

among so many boys. About this time, 1898, the 
Spanish War broke out, and taking advantage of the 
military spirit which pervaded the country, we changed 
the school from a coeducational institution to a boy's 
military academy. At this time the name was changed 
from The Platte Collegiate Institute to The Kearney 
Military Academy. 

The year we opened the school there w r as a good at- 
tendance of boys and girls mostly from the country. 
The tuition, board and furnished room we offered for 
one hundred and twenty dollars a year and were 
meeting expenses at that price. Soon after came the 
years of drought and famine, so the country people 
had no money for schooling and the children had to 
work the year around to fend off starvation. It was 
a hard time for the school, but sympathizing friends 
in the east helped us to keep it going. 

Professor C. A. Murch took charge of the school 
the first three years and then Mr. H. N. Russell for 
the next three years. Both gave up discouraged on 
account of the hard times. Then Rev. E. P. Chitten- 
den took the school, having, like the others, the whole 
plant rent free, on condition that the tuition should be 
kept low so as to reach the needs of our plainer people. 
The first year Dr. Chittenden did very well, but in 
the midst of the second year, on account of neglect 
and complications, the school nearly broke up entirely. 
I then induced Mr. Russell to become head master 
and I took the general management of the school my- 
self. I might then have given up the school in despair 
if just at that time an endowment of thirty-six thousand 
dollars had not come to the school from the estate of 
Mr. Felix R. Brunot. This sum I carefully set aside, 
determined to use only the interest on it to keep the 



186 The Farmer Boy 

school going and to help the poorer boys with scholar- 
ships. After I had managed the school for several 
years and put it fairly on its feet, Mr. Russell was 
again willing to take the school plant, rent free, and 
assume the financial responsibilities. As the times im- 
proved, the attendance increased until the boarding 
pupils numbered nearly one hundred boys. This 
greatly crowded our buildings, and there became great 
need of a large, permanent, fire-proof building. 

At this juncture, Mr. F. G. Keens of Kearney 
came to me and offered to raise twenty-five thousand 
dollars in Kearney, giving ten thousand dollars of it 
himself, if I would raise twenty-five thousand dollars 
in the east for a fine new building. I laid the proposi- 
tion before the Mother of the school, Mrs. Eva S. 
Cochran, and after careful investigation, she promised 
the other twenty-five thousand dollars. The building 
was to be of reenforced concrete, the walls filled in 
with pressed brick and hollow tile and the whole en- 
tirely fire-proof. 

I would here add that in due time the building was 
completed and occupied. The furnishing of this new 
building came largely from the generosity of Mr. H. 
N. Russell and from a legacy left to the school by a 
Mr. Nathan Campbell of Kearney. As the expenses 
of living increased and the people were better able to 
pay, the price of tuition and board was gradually 
raised from one hundred and twenty dollars a year to 
two hundred and fo.ty dollars. Mr. Russell remained 
in charge as long as I was bishop there and deserves 
great credit for the upbuilding of the school. The 
school became in every way a blessed success and a 
helpful adjunct to the Church's work in the District 
of Kearney and the neighboring dioceses. I would 



Who Became a Bishop 187 

also add that the little boy at Broken Bow was a free 
pupil in the school for several years, although he did 
not finally study for the ministry. Some other pupils 
of the school, however, are now in the ministry and 
others became teachers there and elsewhere. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

1907. 

REMAINED at home the winter of this year 
* teaching my youngest son, Paul, who was not 
well enough to attend school. Every Sunday I was 
supplying some vacant mission with services or assist- 
ing some of our over-worked clergy. From March 1 st 
to July 1 st I was constantly on the road making visita- 
tions. On June 1 1 th I married my eldest daughter, 
Margaret, to Rev. G. G. Bennett, whom I had lately 
ordained to the priesthood. July and August I spent 
with my family at Mekenock, on Turtle Lake, Minne- 
sota. In October, with my wife, I attended the Gen- 
eral Convention in Richmond, Virginia. October 1 0th, 
by action of the House of Bishops, I was relieved of the 
charge of eastern Wyoming, which I had held for nine 
years. That state was then made into a separate mis- 
sionary district and a bishop elected for it. This was a 
blessed relief to me, as all that work with my advancing 
age was too hard for me. At that convention, mission- 
ary bishops were elected for Nevada, eastern Oregon, 



188 The Farmer Boy 

western Colorado and Wyoming. The last of No- 
vember I started with my wife to spend the winter in 
Key West, Florida. The work of this year is best 
summed up in the following extract from my report to 
the Board of Missions: 

" The last year has been a prosperous one for our 
Missionary District. We have raised more money for 
Church extension and for our missions than in any 
previous year and ten per cent more candidates for 
confirmation have been presented than in any one year 
before. We have been troubled as heretofore for lack 
of clergymen, but those in the field have made extra 
efforts to reach all stations. We have some good ex- 
amples of successful intensive work in the larger places, 
but the missionary having the largest number of stations 
has presented the largest number for confirmation. A 
large per cent of those presented in the small stations 
are adults in middle life, people much more difficult 
to reach than children from our Sunday schools. This 
shows the character of our work and that if we neglect 
the smaller places and the country stations to concen- 
trate our efforts on the larger places, as the policy 
of some is, we shall neglect the Church's best oppor- 
tunities. The fact is that we have few large places 
and if we confined our efforts to them we should 
accomplish little in a district like ours. 

We have built two new churches the last year, both 
to replace former cheap chapels and are laying founda- 
tions for two more for a similar purpose. There is debt 
against only one church building in all our district. 
We have built an additional building for our boys' 
school at a cost of fifty thousand dollars. Many places 



Who Became a Bishop 189 

have made permanent improvements in their churches. 
In many respects the outlook is more promising than 
ever before. 

During the year I have visited all our stations where 
we have no regular services. In some of these I had 
confirmation and made arrangements for regular 
services. There has been considerable immigration 
into Wyoming and still more into western Nebraska. 
The price of land has doubled in the last three years. 
Hardly any of the immigrants are Church people, but 
their coming gives us more people to work among and 
they increase the general prosperity. Only a small pro- 
portion of those coming from farms farther east are 
even nominal Christians of any kind. In some respects, 
they are more difficult to reach than heathen people. 
Still we welcome their coming and are better able to 
interest some of them than could be done in their old 
homes. 

A TYPICAL NEW MISSION. 

Some four or five years ago I sent a missionary to the 
little village of Gillette, Wyoming, to spy out the land. 
He reported that there were not only no Church peo- 
ple there, but none who cared for Christian services of 
any kind. Cowboys and saloonkeepers ran the town. 
Last spring I received a letter from a clergyman in 
Illinois, saying that a Church lady from Gillette was 
visiting there who named several Church people in 
Gillette who desired the services of the Church. I im- 
mediately wrote to Gillette asking for particulars and 
received an encouraging reply. Although the place 
was six hundred miles from my home and my appoint- 
ments were out for that part of my field, I arranged 
to stop off five or six hours between trains. On arriv- 



190 The Farmer Boy 

ing there a month later I was met at the station by the 
leading physician and taken at once to his home. His 
wife, an earnest Church woman, told me that there 
were some baptisms and several anxious to be con- 
firmed. She took me at once to call on the parties. 
Two hours after my arrival I lectured on baptism and 
administered that sacrament to two adults and three 
children. In the evening forty-five came to the service 
in the Baptist church. I preached and confirmed five 
persons, giving them particular instructions. I then ar- 
ranged to stop over between trains on my return a 
week later. At that time I baptized one adult and one 
child and administered communion to six persons, in- 
structing them the best I could in the brief time allowed. 
They arranged to meet every Sunday afternoon for 
a lay-readers' service and singing of hymns. Since 
then the nearest missionary at Sheridan, one hundred 
miles away, has visited Gillette, instructing them more 
fully and giving them the communion. The Ladies' 
Guild, which I organized at first, has already a good 
fund started toward building a chapel. The secretary 
of the guild reports to me every few weeks. The en- 
thusiasm of a new mission like that comes like a fresh 
breeze across the life of a missionary bishop. 

OUR CHURCH SCHOOL FOR BOYS. 
The Kearney Military Academy has had a year of 
blessed and successful work. We were obliged to de- 
cline some applications of pupils for lack of room to 
accommodate them. Between eighty and ninety boys 
have been in the school during the year. With our new 
fire-proof building now nearing completion, we shall 
be able to accommodate a hundred and fifty pupils and 
the prospects are that it will soon be full. Five of the 



Who Became a Bishop 191 

boys were confirmed during the year and all the boys 
have learned to take active and hearty part in the daily 
Prayer Book service. A young clergyman, a graduate 
of the school, is to be the resident chaplain and teacher 
in the school the coming year. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 
1908. 

DURING this winter, from December 1st to 
March 8th, I had charge of Holy Innocents' 
Mission, Key West, Florida, at the earnest request of 
Bishop Gray. With some assistance from a lay- 
reader, I held three services and a Sunday school each 
Sunday. I made five hundred and fifty parochial calls, 
entered into the parish register a complete list of one 
hundred and eighty-three families, baptized thirty, pre- 
pared and confirmed a class of seventeen and found a 
clergyman to carry on the work. I also confirmed for 
Bishop Gray classes in three other churches of Key 
West. The work of a parish priest and parochial rela- 
tions with the people were very pleasant and satisfactory 
after the many years of work as bishop. While doing 
this work, the mild climate enabled me to recover my 
strength, which the rigor of Nebraska winters had im- 
paired of late years. On my return I was able to visit 
all my stations by the first of June. Just after the com- 
mencement exercises of our school, I started with my 



i c >2 The Farmer Boy 

wife and daughter, Gertrude, for England, to attend 
the Pan-Anglican Congress and the Lambeth Con- 
ference. 

The congress was probably the largest and most re- 
markable missionary meeting ever held up to that time 
on this earth. Delegates from all parts of the world 
were there and meetings were held simultaneously in 
seven great halls in London. About a hundred differ- 
ent subjects were discussed and probably a thousand 
speeches made by experts and others most familiar with 
the various topics. We attended all we could of the 
meetings, which lasted ten days and were much inter- 
ested and edified. Between the close of the Congress 
and the Lambeth Conference we attended several re- 
ceptions given by Lord Elsmere, the Prince of Wales 
and the Lord Mayor of London. We then made a 
rapid trip to Oxford, Warwick and Kenilworth Cas- 
tles and Stratford-on-Avon. 

The Lambeth Conference was held in Lambeth Pal- 
ace, London, the home of the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury. There were two hundred and forty-three bishops 
present from all parts of the world where English is 
spoken and from many other countries where we have 
missions among the heathen. The first session lasted a 
week, then, after a recess of two weeks, ten days longer. 
The more important subjects discussed were the fol- 
lowing: A Revision of the English Prayer Book; 
Consecration of Native Bishops for Different Races; 
Policy of the Church in Regard to Divorces and Fam- 



Who Became a Bishop 193 

ily Relations; Social Reform; Increase of the Minis- 
try; Intercommunion and Reunion with Old Catholics, 
Moravians, Eastern Orthodox Christians and the 
Various Protestant Churches; The Ministry of Heal- 
ing; The Relation of the Church to Modern Science 
and Thought. The discussions were earnest and able 
and much good should result from the Conference. 

During the recess of two weeks, our party took a trip 
north through the Lake country of England, across 
Scotland and back by the great cathedrals in the east of 
England. Nearly every Sunday, while in England, I 
was out in different cities preaching missionary sermons 
for the Society for the Propogation of the Gospel. 
August 7th our party started for the continent, going 
through Belgium, up the Rhine, through northern 
Switzerland, to Vienna and the chief cities of Ger- 
many. I was taken sick at Dresden and was in bed 
a week. After that I started for home and arrived 
in Kearney October 4th. I found several of our mis- 
sion stations vacant and spent the rest of the year giving 
them services and securing clergymen for them. The 
following is a partial summary of my annual report, sent 
to the Board cf Missions: 

' As the General Convention relieved me of fifty 
thousand square miles in eastern Wyoming and twenty 
stations, our report will show a decline in statistics. 
Still our work has prospered and I have been able to 
visit many of the stations twice in consequence. Our 
greatest drawback is the continuous removal of our 



194 The Farmer Boy 

communicants and families. A number of our places 
have lost half their members by removal to other dio- 
ceses. Those who come in to take their places are 
rarely ever members of our Church, as they come from 
dioceses where our Church is very weak. I have con- 
firmed in our District about twice as many communi- 
cants as we have to-day and nearly ten times as many 
as we had when I began my work as bishop. Our peo- 
ple seem to be less contented with life in the country 
and small hamlets than members of the denominations. 
Still we can show good progress made all along the 
line. We often hear of those who have left us doing 
good work in city parishes or helping to establish mis- 
sions on the Pacific slope. We have opened some 
new missions in places where we could not get an open- 
ing before and are building two or three new churches. 
All the groups of missions have been cared for during 
the year except one and that is supplied at present. 

' The Kearney Military Academy has had a year 
of good progress. At Christmas we entered our new 
building. The average attendance has been one hun- 
dred and eight boys with some more enrolled. For the 
first time we have had a resident chaplain and the 
services in the new chapel have been inspiring. Less 
than half the boys on entering are familiar with our 
services, but all soon take a hearty part in the responses. 
A voluntary Bible class has been maintained and eight 
boys well prepared were presented for confirmation. 
From twenty to thirty receive the communion each 
Sunday. Only the income from the endowment is used 
and the outlook is very bright. The Head Master, 
Mr. H. N. Russell, has made a splendid record and 
his life seems wrapped up in the school." 



Who Became a Bishop 195 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

1 909. 

REMAINED at home most of the winter and 
* held services on Sundays in some of the vacant 
missions. Early in February I attended in Lincoln, 
Nebraska, a meeting for the Federation of Churches, 
A tentative organization was formed in which our dele- 
gates had no authority to unite or act for the Church. 
The discussions were most brotherly in spirit and good 
words were spoken in favor of church unity. From 
there I went on to New York to attend a meeting of 
the House of Bishops. At that meeting missionary 
bishops were elected for Wyoming and western Colo- 
rado. While in the east, I visited a few friends of our 
work in New York, New Haven and Cleveland. Be- 
fore the end of the month I was back in Nebraska and 
began my spring visitations. These kept me con- 
stantly on the road until the middle of June. By that 
time I was worn out, so that for the next two months I 
was much of the time in bed, dictating letters to my 
daughter. I also prepared my annual address to our 
convocation and my report to the Board of Missions. 
In August I visited some places in the Black Hills for 
confirmation, at the request of Bishop Hare, who was 
then on his death-bed at Atlantic City. In September 
I spent four weeks with my old friend, Rev, C. H. 



196 The Farmer Boy 

Plummer, D.D., in Minnesota, camping most of the 
time on Turtle Island. 

After attending the Missionary Conference of the 
Sixth Department at Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 
October, I visited for the second time the stations and 
work of George G. Ware. In the northwestern part 
of Nebraska is a large district, known as the " Sand 
Hill Country." It is about two hundred miles from 
east to west and about one hundred miles north and 
south. It is a succession of hills and valleys. Seme 
of the hills are four hundred feet in height, but most 
of them are much less. Between these hills running in 
every direction are low valleys. In some of these val- 
leys are shallow lakes. In these valleys the wild grass is 
cut for hay. The hills are green for about four months 
of the year and are reddish brown the rest of the time. 
Everywhere through this sand hill country are ranch- 
men who keep large herds of cattle. The ranch 
houses are from five to eight miles apart. There are 
several branches of railroad running into the edge of 
this country which carry the cattle to market in the fall. 
One railroad, the Burlington, runs through the middle 
of this country the whole length from east to west. 
Along this railroad about every twenty-five miles are 
little hamlets with from fifty to one hundred inhabitants. 
There are generally two or three large stores in these 
hamlets which supply the ranchmen for forty miles each 
side of the railroad. In some of these hamlets there 



Who Became a Bishop 197 

is a Methodist chapel with occasional services and in 
others there are rarely any religious services. 

The winter before this I heard of a man who had 
been a clergyman living on a ranch a few miles from 
Mullen in the very center of this sand hill country. 
Some two or three years before this he had become in- 
volved in land trouble with the United States Gov- 
ernment largely through the fault of others. On this 
account he had asked to be deposed from the ministry 
by Bishop Hare. The people of Mullen had asked 
him to bury their dead and give them services. He 
wrote to me for a lay-reader's license, which I gladly 
gave him, with permission to exhort. He went to work 
in Mullen and in the country school-houses for thirty 
miles around. In May of this same year I visited his 
central station at Mullen. As the first fruits of his 
work, I baptized ten, confirmed twenty-five and gave 
communion to twenty-eight. I was not able to visit his 
field again until the following October. 

On the evening of the fifteenth of that month, Mr. 
Ware met me as I alighted from the train at the little 
town of Seneca, in the heart of the sand hills. The 
next morning being Sunday, we drove eight miles north 
to a ranchman's house, where I baptized one adult and 
seven children. After instruction I confirmed the father 
and mother of the family. We then drove on four 
miles farther to Miller's ranch, where I baptized five 
adults and two children. I then gave an instruction 
and confirmed six adults. We took dinner there and 



198 The Farmer Boy 

then drove two miles to a school-house known as Jim- 
town, but eight miles from any town. There I 
preached and baptized two adults and five children. 
After an extended instruction I confirmed fifteen and 
addressed them on the duties of the Christian life. We 
then drove a couple of miles farther to Flicker's ranch 
where we spent the night. 

The next morning I baptized a child there and then 
we drove eighteen miles against a cold wind to the little 
town of Mullen on the railroad. That evening we had 
eighty people in the public hall, that being two-thirds 
the inhabitants of the town. I baptized a school 
teacher, preached and confirmed seven adults. The 
next morning I confirmed one more in the hall and ad- 
ministered the communion to twenty-four. We then 
held a business meeting with the congregation and de- 
cided to build a church or rectory. In the afternoon 
we looked with the committee at several sites for the 
church and decided on one which was offered as a 
gift. On the seventeenth we drove seven miles to 
Perkin's ranch and confirmed Mr. Perkins and his son. 
After lunch there we drove several miles to L. C. 
Smith school-house where we had a congregation of 
twenty-five which more than filled the little building. 
After preaching I baptized three adults and seventeen 
children, confirmed twelve and addressed them. We 
then drove four miles to Mr. Ware's home on a ranch, 
where we spent the night. 

The following day we drove to Faut's ranch, where 



Who Became a Bishop 199 

I baptized four adults, gave an instruction and con- 
firmed nine. After lunch there we drove to Mr. Sil- 
baugh's house, where I baptized six children and con- 
firmed Mrs. Silbaugh. We then returned to Mr. 
Ware's home, having driven twenty miles that day. 

On the twenty-second of October we drove fifteen 
miles to Mahaffey's ranch and in the evening confirmed 
Mr. Mahaffey. There we spent the night. The next 
day we drove to Phillip's ranch, where I baptized two 
adults and two children and confirmed Mr. and Mrs. 
Phillips. After lunch there we drove on to Gragg's 
ranch, seventeen miles in all, where we spent the 
night. 

October 24th being Sunday, we held service in 
Eclipse school-house, where I preached to fifteen 
people and returned to Gragg's ranch. In the evening 
I confirmed Mr. and Mrs. Gragg and their son. On 
Monday I was taken to Carey's ranch, to rest and 
hunt ducks. On Tuesday afternoon I returned to 
Eclipse Post Office and held service with Mr. Ware 
in a private house. I gave an instruction, baptized six 
adults and two children and confirmed seven. After 
another day of rest and hunting at Quinn's ranch, we 
drove ten miles to Huffman's ranch. There I con- 
firmed Mr. Huffman and his son. On Saturday we 
drove eighteen miles to Stoddard's ranch, near a post 
office, called Lena. On Sunday, October 31st, I 
made two addresses in the ranch-house, baptized three 
adults and three children and confirmed four. In the 



200 The Farmer Boy 

afternoon I preached to twenty-six in the hall at Lena, 
after which we drove twenty miles, facing a cold north 
wind to Gragg's ranch. This night, as on several other 
occasions, Mr. Ware slept on the floor with the carriage 
robes above and below him. The night before both 
Mr. and Mrs. Ware slept on a load of hay in a barn- 
yard. Mrs. Ware was with us on most of the trip and 
did her full share of the work in personal talks with 
the candidates for baptism and confirmation. The next 
and last day we drove twenty-eight miles to Mullen, 
where I conferred again with the building committee 
and took the night train toward home. During the six- 
teen days we had driven over two hundred miles, held 
nineteen separate services, not one of them in a church 
building, delivered seventeen extempore sermons, bap- 
tized seventy-two, mostly adults, and confirmed 
seventy-four. That made ninety-nine confirmations in 
Mr. Ware's field within six months. A year before 
there were not half a dozen Church people in his dis- 
trict and very few Christians of any kind. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

19 10. 

A S MY health had not been good for four years, 
** I was afraid to spend another winter in the cold 
and storms of Nebraska. I, therefore, made arrange- 
ments to spend the winter in southern California. With 



Who Became a Bishop 201 

my wife and daughter, Gertrude, we arrived in San 
Diego December 1st, 1909. At the earnest request 
of Bishop Johnson, I took temporary care of All Saints* 
Mission parish, whose rector had broken down in 
health. While the work was very interesting, it proved 
rather too hard for me, so that for the three months I 
was not very well. Still I carried it on until the last 
of March, when I returned to my own Missionary Dis- 
trict. Although not feeling strong, I began my spring 
visitations the first of April and kept steadily at them 
until the first of July. Extra strength seemed to be 
given me for this work. It w T as my habit to call on all 
our people in the smaller towns, administer the holy 
communion, preach, confirm any candidates that were 
ready and make a special address to them, also address 
the Sunday school where we had one. There were 
about twenty-five miles ride on the train each day or 
night and many letters to answer all the time. The 
missionaries all reported to me at the end of each month 
and I sent them a check foi the balance due on their 
salary. In this way, I kept in close touch with all the 
work and the woikers. 

I ended up my visitations the last of June by visiting 
again the stations in the sand hills in the care of Mr. 
and Mrs. G. G. Ware. This time I took my daughter, 
Gertrude, to add interest to the services by her singing. 
She sung as solos several of the most effective Gospel 
Hymns. Mrs. Ware played the cottage organs and 
Miss Ware accompanied with the violin. We were 



202 The Farmer Boy 

sixteen days on the trip driving every day and holding 
about twenty services in the school-houses, public halls 
and private houses. In a little over a year I confirmed 
in Mr. Ware's field about one hundred and thirty, 
nearly all adults, and baptized about the same number. 
During the same time, we built a church building at 
Mullen and a little rectory. This phenominal work 
among farmers and ranchmen shows what can be done 
by our Church among country people, where we go at 
it in the right way. This was a district practically 
without religious services of any kind, so there was no 
opposition to distract the people's minds. Mr. Ware, 
having been a ranchman, thoroughly understood the 
people he worked among. Mr. Ware planted, the 
Bishop watered and God gave the increase. 

During the rest of the summer, I gave services at 
several vacant places and went a number of times to 
places where we were building churches and a rectory. 
I did not get away for any vacation. I prepared my 
annual report to the Board of Missions and my address 
to our annual convocation. I felt conscious that this 
would be the last year of my work as Bishop of Kear- 
ney. Our convocation met at Holdrege, where my 
son-in-law, Rev. G. G. Bennett, was in charge on the 
seventh and eighth of September. 

I was able to report to the convocation that I had 
confirmed during the year two hundred and sixty-four 
persons; had secured and paid out for missionary 
work about three thousand dollars; that we had en- 



Who Became a Bishop 203 

dowment funds for different purposes to the value of 
sixty thousand three hundred and fifty-four dollars ; that 
we had special funds for new churches to the amount 
of three thousand four hundred and sixty-seven dollars; 
that the Church school had prospered with nearly one 
hundred boys; that we had paid the General Board 
of Missions about one hundred dollars more than our 
apportionment; that we had opened up new work in 
several places; and that I should probably resign my 
work as Bishop of Kearney at the coming General Con- 
vention in October. 

Soon after the convocation, I sent off the following 
letter : 

" To the Presiding Bishop and the House of Bishops 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church: 

" Dear Fathers in God : 

1 I hereby tender my resignation of the Missionary 
Jurisdiction of Kearney, to take effect as soon as the 
Episcopal care of the District can be otherwise pro- 
vided for. 

1 The reasons which impel me to this action are as 
follows : 

1 st. On account of my advanced age, sixty-eight 
years, and the infirmities incident to that age making 
it difficult for me to do the full duties and endure the 
strain of a work like that in the District of Kearney. 

' 2dly. On account of my health which has been 
failing for the last five years so that I have been seri- 
ously ill after most of my spring visitations. 

' 3dly. Because of the difficulty of securing a mis- 



204 The Farmer Boy 

sionary bishop for such work in case of my becoming 
utterly incapacitated between the meetings of the Gen- 
eral Convention." " Anson R. Graves, 

6 Bishop of Kearney." 

This letter was accompanied by a certificate from 
our family physician to the effect that if I kept on with 
my present strenuous duties I was likely to break down 
completely at any time, but that if I could be relieved 
I might live in comparative comfort for several years 
and be able to do some lighter work. 

On our way to the General Convention, to be held 
at Cincinnati, Ohio, Mrs. Graves and myself visited 
friends in Omaha and Cleveland. At Cleveland I at- 
tended all one day the convention of the colored clergy 
and workers of our Church in the United States. I 
was pleased with the zeal and orderly conduct of their 
business and with the marked ability shown by several 
of their clergy. Some of their laymen also were men 
of mark. 

At the General Convention we were entertained part 
of the time at the home of Mr. Albert W. Schell, who 
is a son in the family I lived with when in college and 
whose parents were my witnesses, or God-parents, at 
my baptism. The parents had long been dead, but I 
found the son prominent and active in Church work, 
as well as a successful business man of Cincinnati. 
The rest of the time we were entertained at the home 
of Mr. Henry Garlick, the father-in-law of one of my 
own clergymen, Rev. C. F. Chapman of North Platte. 



Who Became a Bishop 205 

I was able to attend every session of the House of 
Bishops and spoke on important questions more fre- 
quently and freely than ever before. On the eighteenth 
of October the matter of my resignation was consid- 
ered and with many kind words of regret from several 
bishops was accepted. The Presiding Bishop imme- 
diately appointed me in charge of the District of Kear- 
ney until my successor should be consecrated. At the 
request of several bishops, desiring to know my wishes 
as to my successor, I ventured to nominate three, any 
one of whom I thought would make a faithful bishop ; 
viz. : Geo. A. Beecher, Dean of the cathedral at 
Omaha and formerly a missionary in my District, Rev. 
Irving P. Johnson, rector of Gethsemane Church, 
Minneapolis, and Rev. C. C. Rollitt, Secretary of the 
Sixth Missionary Department. Of these Dean Beecher 
received the largest number of votes and was nominated 
to the House of Deputies as my successor. The nom- 
ination was unanimously confirmed by that House. On 
my way home, I spent several days with Dean Beecher, 
explaining the condition of the funds and the work and 
workers in the District of Kearney. 

On our return to Kearney, there was much to do 
in closing up my work and breaking up our home of 
twenty-one years. The people of North Platte in- 
sisted on my coming there for farewell services and a 
reception. This was an interesting occasion. I had 
been present at the consecration of their first church 
nearly forty years before — had then been called as 



206 The Farmer Boy 

their first pastor — had consecratecf their second church 
just twenty years later and had sustained intimate rela- 
tions with the parish for the last twenty-one years. At 
the reception I received many touching tributes of re- 
spect and affection and a purse of fifty dollars in gold. 
Mrs. Graves also received loving tributes by the 
speakers. 

On the evening of November 28th a farewell re- 
ception was given to Mrs. Graves and myself in a public 
hall in Kearney. Complimentary addresses were made 
by Mr. H. N. Russell, Head Master of our Church 
school for boys, and by the rector of the parish, Rev. 
P. G. Snow. It appeared there that a fund had been 
raised from the District with which to place a large, 
framed portrait of myself in the school and also a 
bronze tablet, commemorating me as the founder of 
the school. At the same time a purse of forty dollars 
in gold was presented to Mrs. Graves by the Woman's 
Auxiliary of the District of which she had been presi- 
dent for many years. There were present at the recep- 
tion not only the people of our Church but also the 
leading men of the city. This was my last day in 
Kearney as bishop. 

In my report to the Board of Missions this year I 
gave them this: 

" SUMMARY OF TWENTY-ONE YEARS. 
11 A brief summary of my work as missionary bishop 
for twenty-one years may be of interest to the Board. 
I have ordained fourteen deacons and thirteen priests. 




MRS. A. R.GRAVES AT FIFTY VEARS <>F AGE, 



Who Became a Bishop 



207 



We have had eighty-three different clergymen in the 
twenty-one years. Of these I have transferred sixty- 
four to other jurisdictions, one of whom has returned. 
Four have died in this jurisdiction and eight have died 
since leaving us. We still have fourteen besides the 
Bishop canonically resident. We have built twenty-six 
churches and fourteen rectories. I have baptized in my 
own District four hundred and fifty-six and confirmed 
four thousand and thirteen. I have married twenty-four 
couples. Of those confirmed fifteen hundred were 
brought up in our own Church, five hundred and forty- 
five had no religious antecedents. The other two 
thousand and sixty-eight had had some religious train- 
ing in twenty-four different religious bodies in child- 
hood, but for the most part were not active members 
of any. The average age of those confirmed was 
twenty-five, but ranging all the way from ten to ninety- 
four years. All the baptisms in our present District 
of Kearney, that is western Nebraska, were four thou- 
sand and ninety-five; marriages six hundred and sev- 
enty-one; burials seven hundred and seventy-three; 
public services forty-three thousand five hundred and 
forty-eight. 

' Twenty-one years ago we had not a dollar of 
funds of any kind. To-day we have 



1 School Endowment Fund .... 
1 Missionary Endowment Fund. 
1 Episcopal Endowment Fund . 
4 Insurance Endowment Fund. . 
* Scholarship Endowment Fund 
1 Church Building Funds 



$36,275.00 
10,610.84 
7,768.31 
4,600.00 
1,200.00 
2,398.47 



Total $62,852.62 



208 The Farmer Boy 

" When I began my work in this District we had 
property in churches and rectories to the value of 
forty thousand dollars. Our property to-day in 
churches, rectories and the school amounts to two 
hundred and fifty-four thousand six hundred and forty 
dollars and fifty-seven cents above debts, showing an 
increase together with our funds, in twenty-one years, 
of two hundred and seventy-seven thousand four hun 
dred and ninety-three dollars and nineteen cents. 

' The day after the farewell reception in Kearney 
we took the train for Omaha to join in the consecration 
of Dean Beecher as my successor. Again we were 
guests at the home of my old friend, Philip Potter, 
who had been a great help to me in investing the perma- 
nent funds of our District and in caring for them after 
they were invested. In the presence of a vast congrega- 
tion, a large number of clergy and several bishops, on 
St. Andrew's Day, November 30th, Dean Beecher 
was consecrated the second bishop of the District of 
Kearney. As my hands rested on his head in the con- 
secration my authority as bishop of that District passed 
from me forever and my work as such was ended. 
Here also, I end this account of myself and my life 
work." 

CONCLUSION. 
As I look back over my life to the aspirations and 
inspirations of my youth, I cannot but feel that, in tak- 
ing up the work of the ministry instead of law and 
politics, I did the wisest and best thing possible as 



Who Became a Bishop 209 

serial and civil conditions then existed. Politics were 
managed by party leaders and bosses in such a way that 
it was almost impossible to gain prominence and promo- 
tion in ways that were strictly honorable. There may 
have been exceptions, but such was the general rule. I 
hope conditions are better now and will continue to grow 
still better. Of this much I am assured that my life has 
been happier and I trust more useful in the course I 
have followed. The joys of a minister's life, the triumph 
of winning souls for Christ, the turning of the indifferent 
and even the infidel from their carelessness and unrest 
to the peace and glowing hopes of a Christian, are such 
as can hardly be equalled in any other calling. While 
a clergyman may not become wealthy he generally has 
the comforts of life. In the thousands of homes in 
which I have been entertained I have generally found 
those of the clergy the sunniest and sweetest of them 
all. God be thanked that it is so. May many a youth 
looking forward to his life work avoid the stormy 
hunger, the burning greed, the bitter rivalries and the 
crushing disappointments of most of those who make 
gold their god and become worshippers of mammon. 
May more of them seek and find the quiet joy, the 
lasting peace, the blessed affections and loving re- 
lationships which come to the faithful priest and pastor 
of the Church of God. 



APPENDIX. 

As I never expect to write another book, I append 
the following odds and ends which may be of interest 
or amusement to some of those who have read thus far. 

In 1908, feeling the uselessness, except to cultivate 
the habit of prayer, of a child saying the old familiar 

" Now I lay me down to sleep 
I pray the Lord my soul to keep, 
If I should die before I wake, 
I pray the Lord my soul to take," 

all being about its soul, even before it knows what its 
soul is, I composed the following, expressing the simple 
needs and proper aspirations of a child : 

child's morning prayer. 

I thank Thee, Lord, for sleep and rest, 
For all the things that I love best, 
Now guide me through another day 
And bless my work and bless my play, 
Lord make me strong for noble ends, 
Protect and bless my loving friends, 
Of all mankind good Christians make, 
All this I ask for Jesus' sake. Amen. 

child's evening prayer. 

Lord send me sleep that I may live, 
The wrongs I've done this day forgive, 
Bless every deed and thought and word 



Who Became a Bishop 21 1 

I've rightly done, or said, or heard, 

Bless relatives and friends alway, 

Teach all the world to watch and pray, 

My thanks for all my blessings take 

And hear my prayer for Jesus' sake. Amen. 

In 1872, inspired by an imaginary incident, I wrote 
the following : 

THE PURITAN MAIDEN. 

where is the blood of that stern old race 
Who traversed the sea to that desolate strand, 

Who battled New England's forests down 
And hunted the red man out of the land? 

Who prayed like a Peter and preached like a Paul, 
But banished the Quaker and murdered the witch, 

Who fought for their rights like a Spartan or Turk 
While others they treated to feathers and pitch. 

1 now see it flow through a maiden's veins 

Whose forehead is high and whose eye is clear, 
Whose delicate nose and lips and chin 

Are classically chiseled, are sweetly austere. 

More gently it throbs in her womanly heart, 

But still in its beating is firm and high 
And the spring of her pulse shows a spirit well wrought 

To dare or to suffer, to do or to die. 

And there is a purity calm and severe 

Which speaks of some hero or martyr of old 

Whose ashes have bittered her own limpid mind 
With a truth that is harsh and a love that is cold. 



212 The Farmer Boy 

The following is the substance and almost literally 
the words of my daily evening prayer for many years 
during my episcopate : 

O Lord, merciful Father, I pray Thee forgive me 
for whatever I have done amiss this day in thought, 
word, or deed, or failed to do that I should have done. 
Bless what I have done and accept my thanks for the 
blessings of the past day. Give me sleep and rest this 
night to fit me for the duties of the coming day. 

Guard, guide and bless my wife, my children and 
their children, my other relatives and friends, all who 
have loved me or whom I have loved, especially Lucy 
and Philip. Bless also my God-children, my clergy 
and Church workers and our Church school in all its 
interests. 

Send Thy blessing, temporal and spiritual, upon all 
the givers and helpers of our work, especially Mather, 
Hadden, Auchmuty, Walcott, Cochran, Ward and 
her helpers, the Woodwards, Lewis, Markoe, Coles, 
Van Wagenen, Brown, Rogers, Benson, the Pierre- 
ponts, Godfrey, Thaw, Castleman, Hunnewell, Brown- 
ing and Welles. 

Bring about the unity of Thy Church in Thy good 
time and way and the spread of Thy kingdom every- 
where. 

Have mercy on the suffering and sorrowing, the un- 
fortunate, the lonely, the aged and infirm, the poor, 
the disappointed, the discouraged, the despairing and 
the broken-hearted. All this I ask for Blessed Jesus' 
sake. Amen, amen. 

In 1 876 occurred the Golden Wedding of George 
and Adaline Graves, the uncle and aunt with whom I 



Who Became a Bishop 213 

had a home for two years while preparing for college 
and whom I loved dearly. I was able to be present 
and brought the following as my contribution. 

'Twas a golden fleece that Jason sought 

O'er land and sea of old, 
And a god came down to Danae's bower 

In a fleece of showery gold. 

'Tis a purse of gold the miner seeks 

And delves with laboring pain, 
And the farmer bends his back in toil 

To reap his golden grain. 

But the golden fleece of tender hopes 

A love grown ripe and old 
And the mellow joys of fifty years 

Are the richest feast of gold. 

And the fruits of love are good to see, 

Brave sons and daughters fair, 
And children's children clustered round, 

Bright eyes and golden hair. 

Nor these alone, but others too, 

Who else might wanderers be, 
Are nestled in this home of love 

And share its wedding glee. 

And not a lamb of all this flock, 

Or here or gathered home, 
But owns the bond the Saviour wrought, 

Nor from His fold would roam. 



214 The Farmer Boy 

The tender care of parents' love 

And wisdom from on high 
Have planted here the seeds of peace 

And joys that cannot die. 

Then blessings on these honored heads 

And love, their golden fleece, 
Still smooth the downward way of life 

Through blessed paths of peace. 

Now may the Gracious Comforter, 

The Flame, the Holy Dove, 
Keep ever warm their failing hearts 

And brood their sacred love. 

Some time during the hard years of 1894 and 1895, 
in sympathy with the farmers of my District, I wrote 
the following in their own dialect. It is safe to say 
that it expressed the feelings of thousands of farmers in 
those times: 

THE FARMER'S COMPLAINT. 

I have something to say of my masters, 
It will make your ears tingle I know, 

For they have filled this fair land with disasters 
And laid more'n a million homes low. 

They're the trusts, the combines, corporations 

Of the railroads, of sugar and coal, 
The factories, machinery and matches, 

Most everything's in their control. 

The farmer he toils like a nigger 
And plows and harrows and hoes, 



Who Became a Bishop 215 

He fills all his barns full of fodder, 
But that doesn't buy him no clothes. 

The market is distant and fickle 

And the freight rates enormous ; You've heard 
Two bushels won't take one to market 

And commission men gobble the third. 

I planted a lot of purtaters, 

'Cause the price was way up in the spring, 
And my girls they hoed and picked bugs off 

Hoping dresses and every such thing. 

We had a big crop, you believe it, 
The price was good fifty miles down, 

The railroad with rules regulations 
Couldn't carry the crop to the town. 

The purtaters all rot in the cellar 

And the girls wear around their ole clothes, 

But the railroad got rich by a " corner," 
And that's the way everything goes. 

Our corn wasn't ten cents a bushel, 

Though the prices were fair up above, 

While the coal it went higher and higher 
And the corn it went into the stove. 

The smell of it burnin' is incense 

No doubt to the capitalist's nose, 
But it makes my ole heart ache to smell it 

While I shiver in worn out clothes. 

The lawyer's foreclosing the mortgage 
And usury's made the thing grow 



216 The Farmer Boy 

Till we can't even pay just the interest, 
So our hopes and our home they must go. 

The mechanic and brakeman's no better, 

Their wages are all cut so low 
On the plea of hard times to the railroad, 

Or the trust can no dividend show. 

So we eat our corn cake for our dinner 

Without coffee, or sugar, or wine, 
While the rich they grow richer and richer 

And the trusts they go on to combine. 

What we're comin' to no one can tell us, 
But the kings and the tyrants of old 

Didn't grind their poor subjects no harder 
Than these modern monarchs of gold. 

One time late at night I arrived at the little town of 
Culbertson. I went to bed in the hotel intending to 
sleep late in the morning. About daylight a rooster 
came crowing under my window and woke me up. It 
made me think of the " the priest all shaven and shorn." 
in the nursery rhyme of '' The House that Jack Built." 
As I lay there I enlarged the story by bringing in 
nearly all the domestic animals and all the words that 
rhyme or nearly rhyme with horn, as follows: 

This is the Farmer who tilled the farm 

Where lived the Mouse that squeaked in alarm 

To the timid Dove that did no harm 

To the lazy Pig of rounded form, 

Or the Guinea-hen in her nest so warm, 



Who Became a Bishop 2 1 7 

Or the Peacock spreading his tail to adorn 

The scene where the Turkey with beak like thorn, 

That pecked the Donkey so long since born, 

That brayed to the Horse that neighed in scorn 

At the silly Goose that cracked the corn, 

That startled the Duck that quacked to warn 

The lusty Cock that crowed in the morn, 

That Wakened the Priest aH shaven and shorn, 

That married the Man all tattered and torn 

To the Maiden all forlorn, 

That milked the Cow with the crumpled horn, 

That tossed the Dog, 

That worried the Cat, 

That killed the Rat, 

That ate the Malt, 

That lay in the House, 

That Jack built. 

It was my lot while doing my work as bishop in 
Nebraska to spend hours in making connection with 
trains at the little junction town of Kenesaw, on the 
Burlington Line. Once while doing so I passed away 
the time by writing the following: 

KENESAW JUNCTION. 

There is a dreary junction spot, 
A place by angels long forgot, 
Where neither reason, sense, nor law 
Prevents a wait at Kenesaw. 

To wait so long will make you sad, 
But there's no use in getting mad, 
For smile, or swear, or sing, or jaw, 
You're bound to wait at Kenesaw. 



218 The Farmer Boy 

The hours come in, the hours go by, 
You weary grow and fret and sigh, 
Look up or down no train you saw 
While waiting long at Kenesaw. 

The room is small ; it matters not 
If fire goes out, or stove gets hot, 
By turns you freeze and then you thaw 
While waiting trains at Kenesaw. 

You sit and read and read and sit 
Until you fear a nervous fit, 
The seats grow hard, your bones grow raw 
While waiting trains at Kenesaw. 

The time is up! hope beams on fate! 
And then you're told the train is late, 
You sigh and groan with hungry maw, 
But still you wait at Kenesaw. 

With dreary length the hours drag on, 
You're sick with cursing Burlington, 
In heart or brain there's sure a flaw, 
You're paralyzed at Kenesaw. 

I had often to return to my home by a branch rail- 
road and on a freight train. They stopped a long time 
at each little station and sometimes between stations 
unloading railroad material. I once cheered the weary 
way by writing these lines: 

THE KEARNEY FREIGHT. 

Did it ever fall to your miserable fate 

To come from the east by the Kearney freight? 



Who Became a Bishop 219 

Did you get uneasy and somewhat sour 
From waiting at Hastings a good long hour? 

Did you whistle the tune " Juniata Blue," 
As that wonderful town you were dragging through? 
Did you think it a beautiful city you saw, 
While they switched for two hours at Kenesaw? 

Was delay at Lowell so dreary until 
You thought of the " Tale of Metropolisville '' 
Of its glory departed out of the land? 
Did you wish that your train would pull out of the 
sand? 

Was it car-loads of cinders, or car-loads of ties, 
They slowly unloaded, ignoring your sighs 
And strung them for miles along by the track? 
Did the engine back up and give you a whack? 

Did you sing while at Newark a bright, cheerful song? 
Did the bridge o'er the Platte seem twenty miles long? 
And how many liours did you think you were late, 
When at last you got in by the Kearney Freight? 

In 1908 I noticed in some magazine a demand for 
a new national hymn or anthem, less provincial and 
puritanic than M My Country 'tis of thee." I composed 
the following which can be sung to the same tune as 
1 My Country 'tis of thee," though I afterward wrote 
music for it myself. 

A NEW NATIONAL HYMN. 

Our country fair and strong, 
We raise a joyful song 
To thy great name, 



220 The Farmer Boy 

Stretching from sea to sea, 
A country just and free, 
Our hopes are bound to thee 
And thy bright fame. 

No tyrants here survive, 
Here honest men can thrive 

And freedom find; 
With open arms for all 
Who flee from kingly thrall, 
We send a generous call 

To all mankind. 

Here come and toil and live 
And learn with us to give 

Our joys, our tears, 
Here solve the problems great 
Of labor, church and state, 
Transplanting love for hate 

And hope for fears. 

Now sons of noble sires 
Light patriotic fires 

Through this broad land, 
Let wars forever cease, 
Let justice, love and peace 
Throughout the world increase 

By our strong hand. 



AUG 2 S9U 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: March 2006 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



l 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



M 






